LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  CRUZ 


&ERTRAKD  SMITH 
"ACRES  OF  BOOK*"" 
140,  PA  OF!  AVPNU* 

LONG  &*•>   H.a 


WL- 
V 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   '    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO 
DALLAS   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 


BY 

ROBERT   HERRICK 

AUTHOR  OF  "TOGETHER,"  "THE  HEALER,"  ETC. 


gorfe 

THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1913 

Att  rights  reserved 


COPTBIOHT,   1918, 

BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  February,  1913. 


J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


tfS.2. 
05 


CONTENTS 
PAET  I 

THE   WEST  SIDE 

CHAPTEB  PAGK 

I.    THE  NEW  HOME      .        .        .        .        .       .        i        .  3 

II.    A  VICTORY  FOR  MILLY 10 

III.  MILLY  GOES  TO  CHURCH 17 

IV.  MILLY  COMPLETES  HER  EDUCATION       ....  27 
V.    MILLY  EXPERIMENTS 34 

VI.    MILLY  LEARNS 38 

VII.    MILLY  SEES  MORE  OP  THE  WORLD       ....  45 

VIII.    MILLY'S  CAMPAIGN 51 

IX.    ACHIEVEMENTS 59 

PAET   II 
GETTING  MARRIED 

I.    THE  GREAT  OUTSIDE 69 

II.     MILLY  ENTERTAINS          .        .        .        .        .        •        .  78 

III.  MILLY  BECOMES  ENGAGED     _?_:".        .        .        .        .  88 

IV.  CONGRATULATIONS •        .  96 

V.    THE  CRASH       .        .        .        .        *        .        .        .        .  105 

VI.     THE  DEPTHS      .        .        .        .        .        *       ,.        .        .  110 

VII.    MILLY  TRIES  TO  PAY      .        .        .        .        .        *      '.  121 

VIII.    MILLY  RENEWS  HER  PROSPECTS     ...        •        .  129 

IX.    MILLY  IN  LOVE        .        .        ...        .        .        .  140 

X.    MILLY  MARRIES 147 

v 


vi  CONTENTS 

PART  III 
ASPIRATIONS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    THE  NEW  HOME      .        .        .        .        .        h        ,  .  161 

II.    A  FUNERAL  AND  A  SURPRISE        .       „      . ,.       .  .  ^  170 

III.  ON  BOARD  SHIP       .       .       .       .       .       .       .  .  176 

IV.  BEING  AN  ARTIST'S  WIFE      ...        .        .  .  184 

V.     WOMEN'S  TALK        .        .        .        .        .        .        .  .  190 

VI.     THE  CHILD       .        ....        .        .        .  .  198 

VII.    BESIDE  THE  RESOUNDING  SEA        .        .        . '     •„  .  203 

VIII.    THE  PICTURE    .        .        .        .        .        .        ^        .  .210 

IX.    THE  PARDON    .........  217 

X.    THE  PAINTED  FACE        .        .        .        .        „        .  .  226 

XL    CRISIS        .        .        .        .       .        .        *       ,       ,  .  234 

XII.    " COME  HOME"         .        .      ;.        .        .        .       ,  .  236 

PAET  IV 

REALITIES 

I.    HOME  ONCE  MORE .  239 

H.    "  BUNKER'S  "     .        .        .        .        .        .        ,        .  .  247 

III.  MORE  or  "BUNKER'S"    .        .        ...        .  .  257 

IV.  THE  HEAD  OF  THE  HOUSE     .        .        .        .        .  .262 

V.    A  SHOCK  .        .        .        .       ,.        .^      .        .        .  .  271 

VI.    THE  SECRET     .        .        .j     .        .        ,       ,.  •;  .  .  278 

VII.    BEING  A  WIDOW      .                287 

VIII.    THE  WOMAN'S  WORLD 296 

IX.    THE  NEW  WOMAN .  311 

X.    MILLY'S  NEW  MARRIAGE        .        .        .        .        *  .  320 

PART   V 

THE   CAKE   SHOP 

I.    "NUMBER  236"        ....        *:      >       »  .  339 

II.    AT  LAST,  THE  REAL  RIGHT  SCHEME    ....  352 


CONTENTS  vii 

CHAPTER  PAGB 

III.  CHICAGO  AGAIN       .     •  ;.      .       •       .  *  .  .    359 

IV.  GOING  INTO  BUSINESS      .        .        .  •  .  .    366 
V.    MILLY'S  SECOND  TRIUMPH      .        .        .  .  .  . .  377 

VI.    COMING  DOWN .  .  .384 

VII.    CAPITULATIONS         ........    392 

VIII.    THE  SUNSHINE  SPECIAL  .        .        .        .  ..  .  .    400 


PART  ONE 
THE  WEST  SIDE 


ONE   WOMAN'S  LIFE 


THE   NEW   HOME 

"Is  that  the  house!"  Milly  Ridge  exclaimed  disap- 
provingly. 

Her  father,  a  little  man,  with  one  knee  bent  against  the 
unyielding,  newly  varnished  front  door,  glanced  up  appre- 
hensively at  the  figures  painted  on  the  glass  transom  above. 
In  that  block  of  little  houses,  all  exactly  alike,  he  might 
easily  have  made  a  mistake.  Reassured  he  murmured 
over  his  shoulder,  —  " Yes  —  212  —  that's  right!"  and  he 
turned  the  key  again. 

Milly  frowning  petulantly  continued  her  examination  of 
the  dirty  yellow  brick  face  of  her  new  home.  She  could 
not  yet  acquiesce  sufficiently  in  the  fact  to  mount  the  long 
flight  of  steps  that  led  from  the  walk  to  the  front  door. 
She  looked  on  up  the  street,  which  ran  straight  as  a  bowling- 
alley  between  two  rows  of  shabby  brick  houses,  —  all  low, 
small,  mean,  unmistakably  cheap,  —  thrown  together  for 
little  people  to  live  in.  West  Laurence  Avenue  was  drab 
and  commonplace,  —  the  heart,  the  crown,  the  apex  of  the 
commonplace.  And  the  girl  knew  it.  ...  The  April 
breeze,  fluttering  carelessly  through  the  tubelike  street, 
caught  her  large  hat  and  tipped  it  awry.  Milly  clutched 

3 


4  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

her  hat  savagely,  and  something  like  tears  started  to  her 
eyes. 

"What  did  you  expect,  my  dear?"  Grandmother  Ridge 
demanded  with  a  subtle  undercut  of  reproof.  The  little 
old  lady,  all  in  black,  with  a  neat  bonnet  edged  with 
white,  stood  on  the  steps  midway  between  her  son  and  her 
granddaughter,  and  smiled  icily  at  the  girl.  Milly  recog- 
nized that  smile.  It  was  more  deadly  to  her  than  a  curse  — 
symbol  of  mocking  age.  She  tossed  her  head,  the  sole 
retort  that  youth  was  permitted  to  give  age. 

Indeed,  she  could  not  have  described  her  disappointment 
intelligibly.  All  she  knew  was  that  ever  since  their  hasty 
breakfast  in  the  dirty  railroad  station  beside  the  great  lake 
her  spirits  had  begun  to  go  down,  and  had  kept  on  dropping 
as  the  family  progressed  slowly  in  the  stuffy  street-car,  mile 
after  mile,  through  this  vast  prairie  wilderness  of  brick 
buildings.  She  knew  instinctively  that  they  were  getting 
farther  and  farther  from  the  region  where  "nice  people" 
lived.  She  had  never  before  been  in  this  great  city,  yet 
something  told  her  that  they  were  journeying  block  by 
block  towards  the  outskirts,  —  the  hinterland  of  the  sprawl- 
ing city.  (Only  Milly  didn't  know  the  word  hinterland.) 
She  had  gradually  ceased  to  reply  to  her  father's  cheerful 
comments  on  the  features  of  the  West  Side  landscape. 
And  now  she  was  very  near  tears. 

She  was  sixteen  —  it  was  the  spring  of  '86.  Ever  since 
her  mother's  death,  two  years  before,  the  family  had  done 
"light  housekeeping"  in  three  rooms  in  St.  Louis.  This 
212  West  Laurence  Avenue,  Chicago,  was  to  be  her  first 
home  —  this  slab  of  a  dirty  yellow  wall ! 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  5 

"  There  !"  her  father  muttered  with  satisfaction,  as,  after 
a  last  twist  of  key  and  thump  of  knee,  he  effected  an  en- 
trance. Grandma  Ridge  moved  up  the  flight  of  steps,  the 
girl  following  reluctantly. 

"See,  mother,"  little  Horatio  Ridge  said,  jingling  his 
keys,  "it's  fresh  and  clean!" 

The  new  varnish  smelt  poignantly.  The  fresh  paint 
clung  insidiously  to  the  feet. 

"And  it's  light  too,  mother,  isn't  it?"  He  turned 
quickly  from  the  cavernous  gloom  of  the  rear  rooms  and 
pointed  to  a  side  window  in  the  hall  where  one-sixteenth  of 
the  arc  of  the  firmament  was  visible  between  the  brick 
walls  of  the  adjoining  houses. 

"The  dining-room's  downstairs  —  that  makes  it  roomier," 
he  continued,  throwing  open  at  random  a  door.  "There's 
more  room  than  you'd  think  from  the  outside." 

Milly  and  her  grandmother  peered  downwards  into  the 
black  hole  from  which  came  a  mouldy  odor. 

"Oh,  father,  why  did  you  come  'way  out  here!"  Milly 
wailed. 

"Why  not?"  Horatio  retorted  defensively.  "You  didn't 
expect  a  house  on  the  lake  front,  did  you?" 

Just  what  she  had  expected  from  this  new  turn  in  the 
family  destiny  was  not  clear  to  herself.  But  ever  since  it 
had  been  decided  that  they  were  to  have  a  house  of  their 
own  in  Chicago  —  her  father  having  at  last  secured  a  posi- 
tion that  promised  some  permanence  —  the  girl's  buoyant 
imagination  had  begun  to  soar,  and  out  of  all  the  fragments 
of  her  experience  derived  by  her  transient  residence  in 
Indianapolis,  Kansas  .City,  and  Omaha — not  to  mention 


6  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

St.  Louis  —  she  had  created  a  wonderful  composite  —  the 
ideal  American  home,  architecturally  ambitious,  suburban 
in  tone.  In  some  of  the  cities  where  she  had  lived  the 
Ridges  had  tarried  as  long  as  three  years,  and  each  time, 
since  she  was  a  very  little  girl  in  short  dresses  and  had  left 
Indianapolis  crying  over  the  doll  in  her  arms,  she  had  be- 
lieved they  were  permanently  settled:  this  was  to  be  their 
home  for  always. 

Her  mother  had  had  the  same  forlorn,  homesick  hope, 
but  each  time  it  was  doomed  to  disappointment.  Always 
they  had  had  to  move  on,  —  to  make  a  new  circle  of  tem- 
porary acquaintances,  to  learn  the  ropes  of  new  streets  and 
shops  and  schools  all  over  again.  Always  it  was  "busi- 
ness" that  did  the  mischief, — the  failure  of  "  business " 
here  or  the  hope  of  better  " business"  somewhere  else  that 
had  routed  them  out  of  their  temporary  shelter.  Horatio 
Ridge  was  " travelling"  for  one  firm  or  another  in  drugs 
and  -chemicals :  he  was  of  an  optimistic  and  sanguine  tem- 
perament. Milly's  mother,  less  hopeful  by  nature,  had 
gradually  succumbed  under  the  perpetual  tearing  up  of  her 
thin  roots,  and  finally  faded  away  altogether  in  the  light 
housekeeping  phase  of  their  existence  in  St.  Louis. 

Milly  was  sanguine  like  her  father,  and  she  had  the  other 
advantage  of  youth  over  her  mother.  So  she  had  hoped 
again  —  overwhelmingly  —  of  Chicago.  But  as  she  gazed 
at  the  row  of  pallid  houses  and  counted  three  "To  rent" 
signs  in  the  cobwebby  front  windows  opposite,  she  knew 
in  her  heart  that  this  was  not  the  end  —  not  this,  for  her  ! 
It  was  another  shift,  another  compromise  to  be  endured, 
another  disappointment  to  be  overcome. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  7 

"Well,  daughter,  what  d'ye  think  of  your  new  home?" 
Little  Horatio's  blustering  tone  betrayed  his  timidity  before 
the  passionate  criticism  of  youth.  Milly  turned  on  him 
with  flashing  blue  eyes. 

"I  think,  my  dear,"  her  grandmother  announced  primly, 
"that  instead  of  rinding  fault  with  your  father's  selection 
of  a  home,  you  had  better  look  at  it  first." 

Grandma  Ridge  was  a  tiny  lady,  quite  frail,  with  neat 
bands  of  iron-gray  hair  curling  over  well-shaped  ears.  Her 
voice  was  soft  and  low,  —  the  kind  of  voice  which  her  genera- 
tion described  as  "ladylike."  But  Milly  knew  what  lay 
beneath  its  gentle  surface.  Milly  did  not  love  her  grand- 
mother. Milly's  mother  had  not  loved  the  little  old  lady. 
It  was  extremely  doubtful  if  any  one  had  ever  loved  her. 
Mrs.  Ridge  embodied  unpleasant  duties;  she  was  a  vessel 
of  unwelcome  reproof  that  could  be  counted  upon  to  spill 
over  at  raw  moments,  like  this  one. 

"You'll  like  it  first  rate,  Milly,"  her  father  continued 
robustly,  "once  you  get  settled  in  it.  It's  a  great  bargain, 
the  real  estate  man  said  so,  almost  new  and  freshly  painted 
and  papered.  It's  close  to  the  cars  and  Hoppers'"  — 
Hoppers'  was  the  Chicago  firm  that  had  offered  Horatio  his 
latest  opportunity.  "And  I  don't  care  about  travelling  all 
over  Illinois  to  get  to  my  work."  .  .  . 

Curiosity  compelled  Milly  to  follow  the  others  up  the 
narrow  stairs  that  reached  from  the  hall  to  the  floor  above. 
Milly  was  a  tall,  well-developed  girl  for  sixteen,  already 
quite  as  large  as  her  father  and  enough  of  a  woman  physi- 
cally to  bully  the  tiny  grandmother  when  she  wished  to. 
Her  face  was  now  prettily  suffused  with  color  due  to  her 


8  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

resentment,  and  her  blue  eyes  moist  with  unshed  tears. 
She  glanced  into  the  small  front  chamber  which  had  been 
decorated  with  a  pink  paper  and  robin's-egg  blue  paint. 

"Pretty,  ain't  it?"  Horatio  observed,  seeking  his  crumb 
of  appreciation. 

"It's  a  very  nice  home,  Horatio  —  I'm  sure  you  dis- 
played excellent  taste  in  your  choice,"  his  mother  replied. 

"Pretty?  .  .  .  It's  just  awful!"  Milly  burst  forth, 
unable  to  control  herself  longer.  She  felt  that  she  should 
surely  die  if  she  were  condemned  to  sleep  in  that  ugly  cham- 
ber even  for  a  few  months.  Yet  the  house  was  on  the 
whole  a  better  one  than  any  that  the  peripatetic  Ridges 
had  thus  far  achieved.  It  was  fully  as  good  as  most  of  those 
that  her  acquaintances  lived  in.  But  it  cruelly  shamed 
Milly's  expectations. 

"It's  perfectly  horrid, — a  nasty,  cheap,  ugly  little  box,  and 
'way  out  here  on  the  West  Side."  Somehow  Milly  had 
already  divined  the  coming  degradation  of  the  West  Side. 
"I  don't  see  how  you  can  tell  father  such  stories,  grandma. 
.  .  .  He  ought  to  have  waited  for  us  before  he  took  a 
house." 

With  that  she  turned  her  back  on  the  whole  affair  and 
whisked  down  the  narrow  stairs,  leaving  her  elders  to  swal- 
low their  emotions  while  inspecting  the  tin  bath-tub  in  the 
closet  bath-room. 

"Milly  has  her  mother's  temper,"  Mrs.  Ridge  observed 
sourly. 

"She'll  come  'round  all  right,"  Horatio  replied  hopefully. 

Milly  squirmed,  but  on  the  whole  she  "took  her  medi- 
cine" as  well  as  most  human  beings.  .  .  . 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  9 

Meantime  she  stood  before  the  dusty  window  in  the  front 
room  eyeing  the  dirty  street,  dabbing  the  tears  from  her 
eyes  with  her  handkerchief,  welling  with  resentment  at  her 
fate. 

Years  later  she  remembered  the  fierce  emotions  of  that 
dreary  April  day  when  she  had  first  beheld  the  little  block 
house  on  West  Laurence  Avenue,  recalling  vividly  her  rage 
of  rebellion  at  her  father  and  her  fate,  the  hot  disgust  in 
her  soul  that  she  should  be  forced  to  endure  such  mean 
surroundings.  "And,"  she  would  say  then  to  the  friend 
to  whom  she  happened  to  be  giving  a  vivacious  account  of 
the  incident,  "it  was  just  as  mean  and  ugly  and  depressing 
as  I  thought  it.  ...  I  can  see  the  place  now  —  the  horror 
of  that  basement  dining-room  and  the  smells !  My  dear, 
it  was  just  common  West  Side,  you  know." 

But  how  did  Milly  Ridge  at  sixteen  perceive  all  this? 
What  gave  her  the  sense  of  social  distinctions,  —  of  place 
and  condition,  —  at  her  age,  with  her  limited,  even  if  much- 
travelled  experience  of  American  cities?  To  read  this 
mystery  will  be  to  understand  Milly  Ridge  —  and  something 
of  America  as  well. 


II 

A  VICTOKY  FOE  MILLY 

THE  lease  for  the  house  had  been  signed,  however,  and 
for  a  five  years'  term.  The  glib  agent  had  taken  advan- 
tage of  Horatio's  new  fervor  for  being  settled,  as  well  as  his 
ignorance  of  the  city.  The  lease  was  a  fact  that  even 
Milly 's  impetuous  will  could  not  surmount  —  for  the  present. 

Somehow  during  the  next  weeks  the  Ridge  furniture  was 
assembled  from  the  various  places  where  it  had  been  cached 
since  the  last  impermanent  experiment  in  housekeeping. 
It  was  a  fantastic  assortment,  as  Milly  realized  afresh  when 
it  was  unpacked.  As  a  basis  there  were  a  few  pieces  of  old 
southern  mahogany,  much  battered,  but  with  a  fine  air 
about  them  still.  These  were  the  contributions  of  Milly's 
mother,  who  had  been  of  a  Kentucky  family.  To  these 
had  been  added  here  and  there  pieces  of  many  different 
styles  and  shades  of  modern  inelegance.  One  layer  of  the 
conglomerate  was  specially  distasteful  to  Milly.  That  was 
the  black-walnut  " parlor  set,"  covered  with  a  faded  green 
velvet,  the  contribution  of  Grandma  Ridge  from  her  Penn- 
sylvania home.  It  still  seemed  to  the  little  old  lady  of  the 
first  water  as  it  had  been  when  it  adorned  Judge  Ridge's 
brick  house  in  Euston,  Pa.  Milly  naturally  had  other 
views  of  this  treasure.  Somewhere  she  had  learned  that 
the  living  room  of  a  modern  household  was  no  longer  called 

10 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  11 

the  "  parlor,"  by  those  who  knew,  but  the  "  drawing-room," 
and  with  the  same  unerring  instinct  she  had  discovered 
the  ignominy  of  this  early  Victorian  heritage.  She  did  not 
loathe  the  shiny  " quartered  oak"  dining-room  pieces  —  her 
father's  venture  in  an  opulent  moment  —  nor  the  dingy  pine 
bedroom  sets,  nor  even  the  worn  " ingrain"  carpets,  as  she 
did  these  precious  relics  of  her  grandmother's  home. 

Over  them  she  fought  her  first  successful  battle  with  the 
older  generation  for  her  woman's  rights  —  and  won.  She 
directed  the  colored  men  who  were  hired  to  unpack  the 
household  goods  to  put  the  green  velvet  horrors  in  the 
obscure  rear  parlor.  In  the  front  room  she  had  placed  the 
battered  mahogany,  and  had  just  rejected  the  figured  parlor 
carpet  when  her  grandmother  came  upon  her  unawares. 
The  old  lady  had  slipped  in  noiselessly  through  the  area 
door. 

"My  dear  !"  she  remarked  softly,  a  deceitful  smile  on  her 
thin  lips.  "Why,  my  dear  ! "  Milly  hated  this  tender  appel- 
lation, scenting  the  hypocrisy  in  it.  "Haven't  you  made  a 
mistake  ?  I  think  this  is  the  parlor." 

"Of  course  it  is  the  parlor,"  Milly  admitted  briskly, 
wheeling  to  meet  the  cold  gray  eyes  that  were  fixed  on  her. 

"Then  why,  may  I  ask,  is  the  parlor  furni — " 

"Because  I  am  doing  this  to  suit  myself,"  the  girl  promptly 
explained.  "In  this  house,  I  mean  to  have  things  suit  me, 
grandma,"  she  added  firmly.  It  was  just  as  well  to  settle 
the  matter  at  once. 

"But,  my  dear,"  the  old  lady  stammered,  helpless  before 
the  audacity  of  the  revolt.  "I'm  sure  nobody  wants  to 
cross  you  —  but  —  but  —  where's  the  carpet  ?" 


12  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"I'm  not  going  to  have  that  ugly  green  rag  staring  at  me 
any  longer !" 

" My  dear—" 

"Don't  'my  dear'  me  any  more,  grandma,  please  !" 

Mrs.  Ridge  gasped,  closed  her  thin  lips  tightly,  then 
emitted,  — 

"Mildred,  I'm  afraid  you  are  not  quite  yourself  to-day," 
and  she  retreated  to  the  rear  room,  where  in  the  gloom  were 
piled  her  rejected  idols. 

After  an  interval  she  returned  to  the  fight,  gliding  noise- 
lessly forth  from  the  gloom.  She  was  a  very  small  and  a 
very  frail  little  body,  and  as  Milly  put  it  she  was  "always 
sneaking  about  the  house  like  a  ghost." 

"I  see  that  the  kitchen  things  have  not  been  touched,  and 
the  dining-room  furniture  — " 

"And  they  won't  be — until  I  have  this  room  to  suit  me.  .  .  . 
Sam,  please  move  that  desk  a  little  nearer  the  window.  .  .  . 
There!" 

It  was  characteristic  of  Milly  to  begin  with  the  show  part 
of  the  premises  first  and  then  work  backwards  to  the  funda- 
mentals, pushing  confusion  slowly  before  her.  The  old 
lady  watched  the  colored  man  move  the  rickety  mahogany 
back  and  forth  under  Milly's  orders  for  a  few  more  minutes, 
then  her  thin  lips  tightened  ominously. 

"I  think  your  father  may  have  something  to  say  about  this, 
Mildred!" 

"He'll  be  all  right  if  you  don't  stir  him  up,"  the  girl  replied 
with  assurance.  She  walked  across  the  room  to  her  grand- 
mother. "See  here,  grandma,  I'm  'most  seventeen  now  and 
big  for  my  age  — " 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  13 

"Please  say  'large/  Mildred." 

"  Large  then  —  'most  a  woman.  And  this  is  my  father's 
home  —  and  mine  —  until  he  gets  married  again,  which  of 
course  he  won't  do  as  long  as  I  am  here  to  look  after  him.  .  .  . 
And,  grandma,  I  mean  to  be  the  head  of  this  house." 

The  old  lady  drooped. 

"Very  well,  my  dear,  I  see  only  too  plainly  the  results 
of  your  poor  mother's  — " 

"Grandma  !"  the  girl  flashed  warningly. 

"If  I'm  not  wanted  here  — " 

"You're  not  —  now  !  The  best  thing  for  you  to  do  is  to 
go  straight  back  to  the  boarding-house  and  read  your  Christian 
Vindicator  until  I'm  ready  for  you  to  move  in." 

"At  the  rate  you  are  going  it  will  be  some  days  before  your 
father  can  have  the  use  of  his  home." 

"A  week  at  least  I  should  say." 

"And  he  must  pay  board  another  week  for  all  of  us  !" 

"I  suppose  so  —  we  must  live  somewhere,  mustn't  we?" 
Milly  remarked  sweetly. 

So  with  a  final  shrug  of  her  tiny  shoulders  the  little  old 
lady  let  herself  out  of  the  front  door,  stealthily  betook  her- 
self down  the  long  flight  of  steps  and,  without  a  backward 
glance,  headed  for  the  boarding-house.  Milly  watched  her 
out  of  sight  from  the  front  window. 

"Thank  heaven,  she's  really  gone  !"  she  muttered.  "Al- 
ways snooping  about  like  a  cat,  —  prying  and  fussing.  She's 
such  a  nuisance,  poor  grandma." 

It  was  neither  said  nor  felt  ill-naturedly.  Milly  was 
generous  with  all  the  world,  liked  everybody,  including  her 
grandmother,  who  was  a  perpetual  thorn, — liked  her  least  of 


14  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

anybody  in  the  world  because  of  her  stealthy  ways  and  her 
petty  bullying,  also  because  of  the  close  watch  she  kept  over 
the  family  purse  when  Milly  wished  to  thrust  her  prodigal 
hand  therein.  She  made  the  excuse  to  herself  when  she  was 
harsh  with  the  old  lady,  —  "And  she  was  so  mean  to  poor 
mama,  — "  that  gentle,  soft,  weak  southern  mother,  whom 
Milly  had  abused  while  living  and  now  adored  —  as  is  the 
habit  of  imperfect  mortals.  .  .  . 

So  with  a  lighter  heart,  having  routed  the  old  lady,  at 
least  for  this  afternoon,  Milly  continued  to  set  up  the  broken 
and  shabby  household  goods  to  suit  herself.  She  coaxed  the 
colored  boys  into  considerable  activity  with  her  persuasive 
ways,  having  an  inherited  capacity  for  getting  work  out 
of  lazy  and  emotional  help,  who  respond  to  the  personal 
touch.  By  dusk,  when  her  father  came,  she  had  the  two  front 
rooms  arranged  to  her  liking.  Sam  was  hanging  a  bulky 
steel  engraving — " Windsor  Castle  with  a  View  of  Eton"  — 
raising  and  lowering  it  patiently  at  Milly's  orders.  It  was 
the  most  ambitious  work  of  art  that  the  family  possessed, 
yet  she  felt  it  was  not  really  suited,  and  accepted  it  provi- 
sionally, consigning  it  mentally  to  the  large  scrap-heap  of 
Ridge  belongings  which  she  had  already  begun  in  the  back 
yard. 

"Well,  daughter,"  Mr.  Ridge  called  out  cheerily  from  the 
open  door,  "how  you're  getting  on?" 

"Oh,  papa  !"  (Somewhere  in  the  course  of  her  wanderings 
Milly  had  learned  not  to  say  "paw.") 

She  flew  to  the  little  man  and  hugged  him  enthusiastically. 

"I'm  so  dead  tired  —  I've  worked  every  minute,  haven't 
I,  Sam?" 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  '  15 

"She  sure  has,"  the  boy  chuckled  admiringly,  "kep  us  all 
agoin'  too  I" 

"How  do  you  like  it,  papa?" 

Milly  led  the  little  man  into  the  front  room  and  waited 
breathlessly  for  his  approbation.  It  was  her  first  attempt 
in  the  delicate  art  of  household  arrangement. 

"It's  fine  —  it's  all  right  I"  Horatio  commented  amiably, 
twisting  an  unlighted  cigar  between  his  teeth  and  surveying 
the  room  dubiously.  His  tone  implied  bewilderment.  He 
was  a  creature  of  habits,  even  if  they  were  peripatetic  habits : 
he  missed  the  parlor  furniture  and  the  green  rug.  They 
meant  home  to  him.  Looking  into  the  rear  cavern  where 
Milly  had  thrust  all  the  furniture  she  had  not  the  courage 
to  scrap,  he  observed  slyly,  —  "What'll  your  grandmother 
say?" 

"She's  said  it,"  Milly  laughed. 

Horatio  chuckled.  This  was  woman's  business,  and  wise 
male  that  he  was  he  maintained  an  amused  neutrality. 

"Ain't  you  most  unpacked,  Milly?  I'm  getting  dead 
tired  of  boarding." 

"Oh,  I've  just  begun,  really !  You  don't  know  what  time 
it  takes  to  settle  a  house  properly." 

"Didn't  think  we  had  so  much  stuff." 

"We  haven't  anything  fit  to  use  —  that's  the  trouble. 
We  must  get  some  new  things  right  away.  I  want  a  rug  for 
this  room  first." 

"Isn't  there  a  carpet?" 

"A  carpet !  Papa,  they  don't  use  carpets  any  more.  A 
nice,  soft  rug,  with  a  border  'round  it."  .  .  .... . 

Horatio  retreated  towards  the  door.      But   before  they 


16  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

had  reached  the  boarding-house,  the  first  advance  towards 
Milly's  Ideal  of  the  New  Home  had  been  plotted.  The 
rug  was  settled.  Milly  was  to  meet  her  father  in  the  city 
at  noon  on  the  morrow  and  select  one.  Arm  in  arm,  father 
and  daughter  came  up  the  steps,  —  charming  picture  of 
family  intimacy. 

"So  nice  to  see  father  and  daughter  such  friends!"  one 
of  the  boarding-house  ladies  observed  to  Grandma  Ridge. 

"Oh,  yes,"  the  old  lady  admitted  with  a  chilly  smile. 
She  knew  what  these  demonstrations  cost  in  cash  from  her 
son's  leaky  pockets.  If  she  had  lived  later,  doubtless  she 
would  have  called  Milly  a  cunning  grafter. 

Milly  smiled  upon  the  interested  stranger,  good  humoredly, 
as  she  always  smiled.  She  was  feeling  very  tired  after  her 
day's  exertions,  but  happily  content  with  her  first  efforts 
to  realize  her  ambition,  —  to  have  "some  place  for  herself." 
What  she  meant  by  having  a  place  for  herself  in  the  world 
she  did  not  yet  understand  of  course.  Nor  what  she  could 
do  with  it,  having  achieved  it.  It  was  an  instinct,  blind 
in  the  manner  of  instincts,  of  her  dependent  womanhood. 
She  was  quite  sure  that  something  must  happen,  —  a  some- 
thing that  would  give  her  a  horizon  more  spacious  than 
that  of  the  West  Side. 

Meantime  she  ate  the  unappetizing  food  put  before  her 
with  good  grace,  and  smiled  and  chatted  with  all  the  dreary 
spinsters  of  the  boarding-house  table. 


Ill 

MILLY   GOES   TO    CHURCH 

THE  ugly  little  house  was  at  last  got  to  rights,  at  least 
as  much  so  as  Milly's  limited  means  permitted.  Horatio's 
resources  were  squeezed  to  the  last  dollar,  and  the  piano 
came  in  on  credit.  Then  the  family  moved  in,  and  soon 
the  girl's  restless  gaze  turned  outwards. 

She  must  have  people  for  her  little  world,  —  people  to 
visit  with,  to  talk  to.  From  her  doll  years  Milly  had  loved 
people  indiscriminately.  She  must  have  them  about  her,  to 
play  with,  to  interest,  to  arouse  interest  in  herself.  Where- 
ever  she  derived  this  social  passion  —  obviously  not  from 
Grandma  Ridge  —  it  had  been  and  would  always  be  the 
dominant  note  of  her  life.  Later,  in  her  more  sophisticated 
and  more  introspective  phase,  she  would  proclaim  it  as  a 
creed  :  "  People  are  the  most  interesting  thing  in  life  —  just 
humans!"  And  she  would  count  her  gregariousness  as  a 
virtue.  But  as  yet  it  was  unconscious,  an  animal  instinct 
for  the  herd.  And  she  was  lonely  the  first  days  at  West 
Laurence  Avenue. 

Everywhere  the  family  had  put  foot  to  earth  in  its  wander- 
ings, Milly  had  acquired  friends  easily,  —  at  school,  in  church, 
among  the  neighbors,  —  what  chance  afforded  from  the  mass. 
She  wept  even  on  her  departure  from  St.  Louis,  which  she 
had  hated  because  of  the  light  housekeeping,  at  the  thought 
c  17 


18  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

of  losing  familiar  faces.  A  number  of  her  casual  friends 
came  to  the  station  to  see  her  off,  as  they  always  did.  She 
kissed  them  all,  and  swore  to  each  that  she  would  write, 
which  she  promptly  forgot  to  do.  But  she  loved  them  all, 
just  the  same.  And  now  that  the  Ridge  destiny  seemed  to 
be  settled  with  fair  prospects  of  permanency  in  this  new, 
untried  prairie  city,  —  a  huddle  of  a  million  or  more  souls,  — 
she  cast  her  eager  eyes  about  for  the  conquest  that  must  be 
made.  ...  , 

The  social  hegira  from  the  West  Side  of  the  city  had  already 
begun:  the  more  prosperous  with  social  aspirations  were 
dropping  away,  moving  to  the  north  or  the  south,  along  the 
Lake.  Some  of  the  older  families  still  lingered,  rooted  in 
associations,  hesitant  before  new  fashions,  and  these,  Milly 
at  once  divined,  lived  in  the  old-fashioned  brick  and  stone 
houses  along  the  Boulevard  that  crossed  West  Laurence 
Avenue  just  below  the  Ridge  home.  These  seats  of  the 
mighty  on  Western  Boulevard  might  not  be  grand,  but  they 
alone  of  all  the  neighborhood  had  something  of  the  aristo- 
cratic air. 

This  spacious  boulevard  was  the  place  she  chose  for  her 
daily  stroll  with  her  grandmother,  taking  the  old  lady,  who 
had  betrayed  an  interest  in  a  cemetery,  up  and  down  Western 
Boulevard,  past  the  large  houses  where  the  long  front  windows 
were  draped  with  spotless  lace  curtains.  She  learned  some- 
how that  the  old-fashioned  brick  house,  with  broad  eaves  and 
wooden  pillars,  belonged  to  the  Claxtons.  The  grounds  about 
the  house  ran  even  to  the  back  yards  of  the  West  Laurence 
Avenue  block,  —  indeed  had  originally  included  all  that  land, 
—  for  the  Claxtons  were  an  old  family  as  age  went  in  Chicago, 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  19 

and  General  Claxton  was  a  prominent  man  in  the  state. 
She  also  knew  that  the  more  modern  stone  house  on  the 
farther  corner  was  occupied  by  the  Walter  Kemps ;  that  Mrs. 
Kemp  had  been  a  Claxton ;  and  that  Mr.  Kemp  was  a  rising 
young  banker  in  the  city.  How  Milly  had  found  out  all 
this  in  the  few  days  she  had  lived  hi  the  neighborhood  would 
be  hard  to  explain :  such  information  she  acquired  uncon- 
sciously, as  one  does  the  character  of  the  weather.  ... 

On  the  next  corner  north  of  the  Claxton  place  was  a  large 
church,  with  a  tall  spire,  and  an  adjoining  parish  house. 
They  were  built  of  the  same  cream-colored  stone,  which  had 
grown  sallow  under  the  smoke,  with  chocolate-brown  trim- 
mings, like  a  deep  edging  to  a  mourning  handkerchief. 
Its  appearance  pleased  Milly.  She  felt  sure  that  the  best 
people  of  the  neighborhood  worshipped  here,  and  so  to  this 
dignified  edifice  she  led  her  father  and  grandmother  the  first 
Sunday  after  they  were  installed  in  their  new  home. 

It  proved  to  be  the  Second  Presbyterian  Church.  The 
Ridges  were  orthodox,  i.e.  Congregational :  the  judge  had 
been  deacon  in  Euston,  Pa.,  and  Mrs.  Ridge  talked  of  "  send- 
ing for  her  papers"  and  finding  the  nearest  congregation 
of  her  old  faith.  But  Milly  promptly  announced  that 
" everybody  went  to  the  Presbyterian  church  here."  She 
was  satisfied  with  the  air  and  the  appearance  of  the  congre- 
gation that  first  Sunday  and  made  her  father  promise  to  take 
seats  for  the  family.  The  old  lady,  content  to  have  the 
wayward  Horatio  committed  to  any  sort  of  church-going, 
made  slight  objection.  It  mattered  little  to  Horatio  himself. 
In  religion  he  was  catholic :  he  was  ready  to  stand  up  in 
any  evangelical  church,  dressed  in  his  best,  and  boom  forth 


20  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

the  hymns  in  his  bass  voice.  The  choice  of  church  was  a 
matter  to  be  left  to  the  women,  like  the  color  of  the  wall- 
paper, or  the  quality  of  crockery,  —  affairs  of  delicate  dis- 
crimination. Moreover,  he  was  often  out  of  the  city  over 
Sunday  on  his  business  trips  and  did  not  have  to  go  to 
church.  * 

It  was  impossible  that  Milly,  dressed  very  becomingly  in 
her  new  gray  suit,  should  escape  notice  after  the  first 
Sunday.  Her  lovely  bronze  hair  escaped  from  her  round  hat 
engagingly.  Her  soft  blue  eyes  looked  up  at  the  minister 
appealingly.  She  had  the  attractive  air  of  youth  and  health 
and  good  looks.  The  second  Sunday  the  minister's  wife, 
prompted  by  her  husband,  spoke  to  Mrs.  Ridge  and  called 
soon  after.  She  liked  Milly —  minister's  wives  usually  did  — 
and  she  approved  of  the  grandmother,  who  had  an  aristo- 
cratic air,  in  her  decent  black,  her  thin,  gray  face.  "They 
seem  really  nice  people,"  Mrs.  Borland  reported  to  her 
husband,  "but  a  very  ordinary  home.  He  travels  for  the 
Hoppers'.  Her  mother  was  a  southerner."  (Milly  had  got 
that  in  somehow,  —  "My  mother's  home  was  Kentucky, 
you  know.")  .  .  .  So,  thanks  to  the  church,  here  was  Milly 
at  last  launched  on  the  West  Side  and  in  a  fair  way  of  know- 
ing people. 

She  began  going  to  vespers  —  it  was  a  new  custom  then, 
during  Lent  —  and  she  was  faithful  at  the  Wednesday  evening 
prayer  meetings.  The  Borlands  had  a  daughter,  of  about 
Milly's  age,  —  a  thin,  anaemic  girl  who  took  to  Milly's 
warmth  and  eagerness  at  once.  As  Milly  succinctly  summed 
up  the  minister's  family,  —  "They're  from  Worcester,  Mass." 
To  come  from  New  England  seemed  to  Milly  to  give  the 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  21 

proper  stamp  of  respectability,  while  Virginia  gave  aristoc- 
racy. 

Mrs.  Borland  introduced  Milly  to  Mrs.  Walter  Kemp 
after  the  service  one  Sunday.  Milly  knew,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  Mrs.  Kemp  had  been  a  Claxton,  and  that  the  general 
still  lived  in  the  ample  mansion  which  he  had  built  in  the 
early  fifties  when  he  had  transferred  his  fortunes  from  Vir- 
ginia to  the  prairie  city.  They  were  altogether  the  most 
considerable  people  Milly  had  ever  encountered.  And  so 
when  Eleanor  Kemp  called  at  the  little  West  Laurence  Avenue 
house,  Milly  was  breathless.  Not  that  Milly  was  a  snob. 
She  was  as  kind  to  the  colored  choreman  as  to  the  minister's 
wife,  smiling  and  good-humored  with  every  one.  But  she 
had  a  keen  sense  of  differences.  Unerringly  she  reached  out 
her  hands  to  the  "best"  as  she  understood  the  best,  — the 
men  and  women  who  were  "nice,"  who  were  pleasant  to  know. 
And  Mrs.  Kemp,  then  a  young  married  woman  of  twenty- 
seven  or  eight,  seemed  to  the  enthusiastic  girl  quite  adorable. 
She  was  tall  and  slender,  with  fine  oval  features  and  clear 
brown  skin  and  dark  hair.  Her  manner  was  rather  distant 
at  first  and  awed  Milly. 

"Oh,  you're  so  beautiful,  —  you  don't  mind  my  saying  it !" 
she  exclaimed  the  first  time  they  were  alone  in  the  Kemp 
house. 

"You  funny  child  !"  the  older  woman  laughed,  quite  won. 
And  that  was  the  phrase  she  used  invariably  of  Milly  Ridge, 
—  "That  funny  child!"  varied  occasionally  by  "That  as- 
tonishing child! "  even  when  the  child  had  become  a  woman 
of  thirty.  There  would  always  be  something  of  the  breath- 
less, impulsive  child  in  Milly  Ridge. 


22  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

After  that  first  visit  Milly  went  home  to  arrange  a  tea- 
table  like  Eleanor  Kemp's.  She  found  among  the  dis- 
carded remnants  of  the  family  furniture  a  small  round  table 
without  a  leg.  She  had  it  repaired  and  set  up  her  tea-table 
near  the  black  marble  fireplace.  The  next  time  the  banker's 
wife  came  to  call  she  was  able  to  offer  her  a  cup  of  tea,  with 
sliced  lemon,  quite  as  a  matter  of  course,  after  the  manner  that 
Mrs.  Kemp  had  handed  it  to  her  the  week  before.  Milly 
was  not  crudely  imitative :  she  was  selectively  imitative, 
and  for  the  present  she  had  chosen  Mrs.  Kemp  for  her 
model. 

For  the  most  part  they  met  at  the  Kemp  house.  The 
young  married  woman  liked  her  new  r61e  of  guide  and  ex- 
perienced friend  to  Milly ;  she  also  liked  the  admiration  that 
Milly  sincerely,  copiously  poured  forth  on  all  occasions. 
When  Milly  praised  the  ugly  house  and  its  furniture,  she 
might  smile  in  a  superior  way,  for  she  was  "travelled," 
had  visited  "the  chief  capitals  of  Europe,"  —  as  well  as 
Washington  and  New  York,  —  and  knew  perfectly  well  that 
the  solid  decoration  of  her  library  and  drawing-room  was  far 
from  good  style.  The  Kemps  had  already  secured  their 
lot  on  the  south  side  of  the  city  near  the  Lake.  The  plans 
for  their  new  house  were  being  drawn  by  a  well-known  eastern 
architect,  and  they  were  merely  waiting  before  building  until 
Mr.  Kemp  should  find  himself  sufficiently  prosperous  to 
maintain  the  sort  of  house  that  the  architect  had  designed 
for  a  rising  young  western  banker. 

"Oh,  dear,"  Milly  sighed,  "you  will  be  moving  soon  — 
and  there'll  be  nobody  left  around  here  for  me  to  know." 

Eleanor  Kemp  smiled. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  23 

"You  know  what  I  mean !  .  .  .  People  like  you  and 
your  mother." 

"You  may  not  live  here  always,"  her  friend  prophesied. 

"I  hope  not.  But  papa  seems  perfectly  content  —  he's 
taken  a  five  years'  lease  of  that  horrid  house.  I  just  knew  it 
wasn't  the  right  place  as  soon  as  I  saw  it !" 

The  older  woman  laughed  at  Milly's  despair. 

"There's  time  yet  for  something  to  happen." 

Milly  blushed  happily.  There  was  only  one  sort  of  some- 
thing to  happen  for  her,  —  the  right  sort  of  marriage.  Milly, 
as  Mrs.  Kemp  confided  to  her  husband,  was  a  girl  with  a 
"future,"  and  that  future  could  be  only  a  matrimonial  one. 
Her  new  friend  good  naturedly  did  what  she  could  for  Milly 
by  putting  her  in  the  way  of  meeting  people.  At  her  own 
house  and  her  mother's,  across  the  street,  Milly  saw  a  number 
of  people  who  came  into  her  life  helpfully  later  on.  General 
Claxton  was  still  at  that  time  a  considerable  political  figure 
in  the  middle  west,  had  been  congressman  and  was  spoken  of 
for  Senator.  Jolly,  plump  Mrs.  Claxton  maintained  a  large, 
informal  hospitality  of  the  Virginia  sort,  and  to  the  big 
brick  house  came  all  kinds  of  people,  —  southerners  with 
quaint  accents  and  formal  manners,  young  Englishmen  on 
their  way  to  the  wild  northwest,  down-state  politicians,  as 
well  as  the  merchant  aristocracy  of  the  city.  Thus  Milly 
as  a  mere  girl  had  her  first  opportunity  of  peeping  at 
the  larger  world  hi  the  homely,  high-studded  rooms  and  on 
the  generous  porches  of  the  Claxton  house,  and  enjoyed  it 
immensely. 

The  church  had  thus  far  done  a  good  deal  for  Milly. 

For  some  time  it  remained  the  staple  of  her  social  existence, 


24  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

—  that  sallow,  cream-colored  pile,  in  which  the  congregation 
had  already  so  shrunken  by  removals  that  the  worshippers 
rattled  around  in  the  big  building  like  dried  peas  in  a  pod. 
Milly  became  a  member  of  the  pastor's  Bible  class  and  an 
ardent  worker  in  the  Young  Women's  Guild.  She  was  looked 
upon  favorably  as  a  right-minded  and  religious  young  woman. 
She  had  joined  the  church  some  years  before,  shortly  after 
the  death  of  her  mother.  Her  first  religious  fervor  lasted 
rather  more  than  a  year  and  was  dying  out  when  the  family 
moved  from  St.  Louis.  Its  revival  at  the  Second  Presby- 
terian was  of  a  purely  institutional  character.  Although 
even  Grandma  Ridge  called  her  a  "good  girl,"  Milly  was  too 
healthy  a  young  person  to  be  really  absorbed  by  questions 
of  salvation.  Her  religion  was  a  social  habit,  like  the  habit 
of  wearing  fresh  underclothes  and  her  best  dress  on  the 
seventh  day,  having  a  late  breakfast  and  responding  to  the  din 
of  the  church  bells  with  other  ceremonially  dressed  folk.  She 
believed  what  she  heard  in  church  as  she  believed  everything 
that  was  spoken  with  authority.  It  would  have  seemed  to 
her  very  dreadful  to  question  the  great  dogmas  of  Heaven, 
Hell,  the  Atonement,  the  Resurrection,  etc.  But  they  meant 
absolutely  nothing  to  her :  they  did  not  come  into  practical 
relation  with  her  life  as  did  the  ugly  little  box  of  her  home 
and  the  people  she  knew,  and  she  had  no  taste  for  abstrac- 
tions. 

Milly  was  "good."  She  tried  to  have  a  helpful  influence 
upon  her  companions,  especially  upon  young  men  who  seemed 
to  need  an  influence  more  than  others :  she  wanted  to  induce 
them  not  to  swear,  to  smoke,  to  drink  —  or  be  "bad,"  —  a 
vague  state  of  unrealized  vice.  She  encouraged  them  to  go 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  25 

to  church  by  letting  them  escort  her.  It  was  the  proper  way 
of  displaying  right  intentions  to  lead  good  lives.  When  one 
young  man  who  had  been  a  member  of  the  Bible  class  was 
found  to  have  taken  money  from  Mr.  Kemp's  bank,  where 
he  was  employed,  and  indulged  in  riotous  living  with  it, 
Milly  felt  depressed  for  several  days,  —  accused  herself  of 
not  having  done  her  utmost  to  bring  this  lost  soul  to  the 
Saviour. 

Yet  Milly  was  no  prig, — at  least  not  much  of  a  one.  For 
almost  all  her  waking  hours  her  mind  was  occupied  with 
totally  mundane  affairs,  and  she  was  never  much  concerned 
about  her  own  salvation.  It  seemed  so  far  off  —  in  the 
hazy  distances  of  stupid  middle  age  or  beyond.  So,  like 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  other  young  women  of  her  day, 
she  appeared  at  the  Second  Presbyterian  every  Sunday  morn- 
ing, looking  her  freshest  and  her  best,  and  with  engaging 
zest,  if  with  a  somewhat  wandering  mind,  sang,  — 

"  How  firm  a  foundation,  ye  saints  of  the  Lord ! " 

It  was  a  wholly  meaningless  social  function,  this,  and  useful 
to  the  girl.  Later  charity  might  take  its  place.  Horatio 
Ridge,  who  had  never  qualified  as  a  church  member  while 
his  wife  lived,  knowing  his  own  unregenerate  habits  and 
having  a  healthy-minded  male's  aversion  to  hypocrisy,  now 
went  to  church  with  his  daughter  quite  regularly.  He  felt 
that  it  was  a  good  thing,  —  the  right  thing  for  the  girl,  in 
some  way  insuring  her  woman's  safety  in  this  wicked  world, 
if  not  her  salvation  in  the  next. 

They  made  a  pretty  picture  together,  father  and  daughter, 
—  the  girl  with  the  wide  blue  eyes  and  open  mouth,  standing 


26  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the  little  man,  each  with  one 
gloved  hand  grasping  an  edge  of  the  hymn-book  and  sing- 
ing, Milly  in  a  high  soprano,  — 

"Nearer,  my  God,  to  Thee ! " 

and  Horatio,  rumbling  behind  a  little  uncertainly,  — 
"  Nearer  to  Thee  —  to  THEE  1  " 


IV 


MILLY   COMPLETES   HER   EDUCATION 

"  MILLY,"  Mrs.  Kemp  remarked  thoughtfully,  "aren't  you 
going  to  complete  your  education?" 

Milly  translated  this  formidable  phrase  in  a  flash,  — 

"You  mean  go  to  school  any  more  ?    Why  should  I  ?" 

It  was  a  warm  June  day.  Milly  had  been  reading  to  Mrs. 
Kemp,  who  was  sewing.  The  book  was  "Romola."  Milly 
had  found  quite  dull  its  solid  pages  of  description  of  old 
Florence  sparsely  relieved  by  conversation,  and  after  a  futile 
attempt  to  discover  more  thrilling  matter  farther  on  had 
abandoned  the  book  altogether  in  favor  of  talk,  which  always 
interested  her  more  than  anything  else  hi  the  world. 

"Why  should  I  go  to  school?"  she  repeated. 

"You  are  only  sixteen." 

"Seventeen  —  in  September,"  Milly  promptly  corrected. 

Mrs.  Kemp  laughed. 

"I  didn't  finish  school  until  I  was  eighteen." 

"School  is  so  stupid,"  Milly  sighed,  with  a  little  grimace. 
"I  hate  getting  things  out  of  books." 

She  had  never  been  distinguished  in  school,  —  far  from  it. 
Only  by  real  labor  had  she  been  able  to  keep  up  with  her 
classes. 

"I  guess  the  schools  I  went  to  weren't  much  good,"  she 
added. 

27 


28  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

She  saw  herself  behind  a  desk  at  the  high  school  she  had 
last  attended  in  St.  Louis.  In  front  of  her  sat  a  dried,  sallow, 
uncheerful  woman  of  great  age,  ready  to  pounce  upon  her 
and  expose  her  ignorance  before  the  jeering  class.  The 
girls  and  the  boys  at  the  school  were  not  " refined"  — she 
knew  that  now.  No,  she  did  not  want  any  more  school  of 
that  sort.  .  .  .  Besides,  what  use  could  an  education  be,  if 
she  were  not  to  teach?  And  Milly  had  not  the  faintest 
idea  of  becoming  a  teacher. 

"Do  you  think  a  girl  needs  to  know  a  lot  of  stuff  —  stupid 
things  in  books?"  she  asked. 

"  Women  must  have  a  better  education  than  they  once 
did,"  Eleanor  Kemp  replied  with  conviction.  She  refrained 
from  explaining  that  a  girl  like  Milly,  with  no  social  back- 
ground, might  marry  "to  advantage"  on  her  looks,  but  she 
would  need  something  more  to  maintain  any  desirable  posi- 
tion in  the  world.  Such  ideas  were  getting  into  the  air 
these  days. 

"I'm  going  to  take  some  music  lessons,"  Milly  yawned. 

"You  have  a  good  mind,"  her  friend  persisted  flatteringly. 
"Do  you  know  French." 

"A  little,"  Milly  admitted  dubiously. 

"German?" 

Milly  shook  her  head  positively. 

"Latin?" 

"Latin!    What  for?" 

"I  had  two  years  of  Latin.     It's  .  .  .  it's  cultivating." 

Milly  glanced  at  the  load  of  new  books  on  the  library  table. 
She  knew  that  the  Kemps  read  together  a  great  deal.  They 
aspired  to  "stand  for  the  best  things"  in  the  ambitious 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  29 

young  city,  —  for  art,  music,  and  all  the  rest.  She  was 
somewhat  awed. 

"But  what's  the  use  of  a  girl's  knowing  all  that?"  she  de- 
manded practically. 

If  a  woman  knew  how  to  "write  a  good  letter,"  when  she 
was  married,  and  could  keep  the  house  accounts  when  there 
were  any,  and  was  bright  and  entertaining  enough  to  amuse 
her  wearied  male,  she  had  all  the  education  she  needed.  That 
was  Milly's  idea. 

"French,  now,  is  so  useful  when  one  travels,"  Mrs.  Kemp 
explained. 

"Oh,  if  one  travels,"  Milly  agreed  vaguely. 

Later  Mrs.  Kemp  returned  to  the  attack  and  extolled 
the  advantages,  social  and  intellectual,  that  came  with  a 
Good  Education.  She  described  the  Ashland  Institute, 
where  she  had  completed  her  own  education  and  of  which 
she  was  a  recently  elected  trustee. 

"Mrs.  Mason,  the  principal,  is  a  very  cultivated  lady  — 
speaks  all  the  modern  languages  and  has  such  a  refining  in- 
fluence. I  know  you  would  like  her." 

Milly  had  always  attended  public  school.  It  had  never 
occurred  to  her  father  that  while  the  state  was  willing  to 
provide  an  education  he  should  go  to  the  expense  of  buying 
one  privately  for  his  daughter.  Of  course  Milly  knew  that 
there  were  fashionable  boarding-schools.  She  wanted  to 
attend  a  Sacred  Heart  convent  school  where  one  of  her  in- 
timates —  a  Louisville  girl  —  had  been  sent,  but  the  mere 
idea  had  shocked  Mrs.  Ridge,  senior,  unutterably. 

It  seemed  that  the  Ashland  Institute,  according  to  Mrs. 
Kemp,  was  an  altogether  superior  sort  of  place,  and  Milly 


30  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

was  at  last  thoroughly  fired  with  the  idea  that  she  should 
" finish  herself"  there.  Her  grandmother  agreed  that  more 
schooling  would  not  hurt  Milly,  but  demurred  at  the  expense. 
Horatio  was  easily  convinced  that  it  was  the  only  proper 
school  for  his  daughter.  So  the  following  September  Milly 
was  once  more  a  pupil,  enrolled  in  classes  of  " literature" 
(with  a  handbook),  "art"  (with  a  handbook),  "science" 
(handbook),  "mental  and  moral  philosophy"  (lectures),  and 
French  (La  tulipe  noire).  Milly  liked  Mrs.  Mason,  a  per- 
sonable lady,  who  always  addressed  her  pupils  as  "young 
ladies."  And  Milly  was  quickly  fascinated  by  the  professor 
of  mental  and  moral  philosophy,  a  delicate-looking  young 
college  graduate.  She  worked  very  hard,  studying  her  lessons 
far  into  the  night,  memorizing  long  lists  of  names,  dates, 
maxims,  learning  by  rote  whatever  was  contained  in  those 
dreary  handbooks. 

Even  in  those  days  this  was  not  all  there  was  to  education 
for  girls  like  Milly.  There  were  a  few  young  women,  east 
and  west,  bold  enough  to  go  to  college.  But  as  yet  their 
example  had  no  influence  upon  the  general  education  dealt 
out  to  girls.  Most  girls  whose  parents  had  any  sort  of  am- 
bition went  through  the  high  school  with  their  brothers, 
and  then  went  to  work  —  if  they  had  to  —  or  got  married. 
Even  for  the  privileged  few  who  could  afford  "superior 
advantages"  the  ideas  about  women's  education  were  chaos. 
Mrs.  Mason  solved  the  problem  at  the  Ashland  Institute  as 
well  as  any,  with  a  little  of  this  and  of  that,  elegant  informa- 
tion conveyed  chiefly  in  handbooks  about  "literature"  and 
"art";  for  women  were  assumed  to  be  the  "artistic"  sex  as 
they  were  the  ornamental.  There  were,  besides,  deportment, 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  31 

dancing,  and  music,  also  ornamental.  The  only  practical 
occupations  were  keeping  house  and  nursing,  and  if  a  girl 
was  obliged  to  do  such  things,  she  did  not  seek  the  aristo- 
cratic " finishing  school."  The  "home"  was  the  proper  place 
for  all  that.  In  Milly's  case  the  "home"  was  adequately 
run  by  her  grandmother  with  the  help  of  one  colored  servant. 
So  Horatio,  being  just  able  to  afford  the  tuition,  Milly  was 
privileged  to  "finish  herself." 

Of  course  she  forgot  all  the  facts  so  laboriously  acquired 
within  a  short  six  months  after  she  read  her  little  essay  on 
"Plato's  Conception  of  the  Beautiful"  at  the  graduation 
exercises.  (That  effort,  by  the  way,  lay  heavy  on  the  neigh- 
borhood for  weeks,  but  was  pronounced  a  triumph.  It  was 
certainly  a  masterpiece  of  fearless  quotation.)  .  .  .  Learn- 
ing passed  over  Milly  like  a  summer  sea  over  a  shining  sand- 
bar and  left  no  trace  behind,  none  whatever.  It  was  the 
same  way  with  music.  Milly  could  sing  church  hymns  in 
a  pleasant  voice  and  thumped  a  little  heavily  on  the  piano 
after  learning  her  piece.  .  .  .  She  used  to  say,  years  after- 
ward, —  "I  have  no  gifts;  I  was  never  clever  with  books.  I 
like  life,  people!"  and  she  would  stretch  out  her  hands 
gropingly  to  the  broad  horizon. 

This  year  at  the  Ashland  Institute  helped  to  enlarge  that 
horizon  somewhat.  And  one  other  thing  she  got  with  the 
absurd  meal  of  schooling,  —  a  vague  but  influential  some- 
thing, —  an  "ideal  of  American  womanhood."  That  was  the 
way  Mrs.  Mason  phrased  it  in  her  eloquent  talks  to  the  girls. 

The  other  teachers,  especially  the  pale  young  professor 
of  mental  and  moral  philosophy,  referred  to  it  indirectly 
as  the  moving  force  of  the  new  world.  This  was  the  "for- 


32  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

mative  influence"  of  the  school,  —  the  quality  that  the 
Institute  prided  itself  on  above  all  else. 

It  was  of  a  poetic  shade,  composed  in  equal  parts  of  art, 
literature,  and  religion.  Milly  absorbed  it  at  church,  where 
the  minister  spoke  almost  tearfully  about  "the  mission  of 
young  womanhood  to  elevate  the  ideals  of  the  race,"  or  more 
colloquially  in  Bible  class  as  the  duty  of  "being  a  good  in- 
fluence" in  life,  especially  men's  lives.  She  got  it  also  in 
what  books  she  read,  —  especially  in  Tennyson  and  in  every 
novel,  as  well  as  in  the  few  plays  she  saw.  There  it  was  em- 
bodied as  Woman  of  Romance,  —  sublime,  divine,  myste- 
rious, with  a  heavenly  mission  to  reform,  ennoble,  uplift  — 
men,  of  course,  —  in  a  word  to  make  over  the  world.  The 
idea  of  it  had  come  down  from  the  darkness  of  the  middle 
ages,  — that  smelly  and  benighted  period, —  had  inflamed  all 
romance,  and  was  now  spreading  its  last  miasmatic  touch 
over  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century.  All  this,  to  be  sure, 
Milly  never  knew. 

She  merely  began  to  feel  self-conscious,  as  a  member  of 
her  sex,  —  a  being  apart  from  men  and  somehow  superior 
to  them,  without  the  same  appetites  and  low  ideals,  and 
with  her  own  peculiar  and  sacred  function  to  perform  for 
humanity.  Ordinarily  this  heavy  ideal  of  her  sex  did  not 
burden  Milly.  She  obeyed  her  thoroughly  healthy  instincts, 
chief  of  which  was  "to  have  a  good  time,"  to  be  loved  and 
petted  by  people.  But  occasionally  in  her  more  emotional 
moods,  when  she  was  singing  hymns  or  watching  the  sun 
depart  in  golden  mists,  she  experienced  exalted  sensations 
of  the  beauty  and  the  glory  of  life  —  of  her  life  —  and  what 
it  all  might  mean  to  Some  One  (a  man). 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  33 

When  she  undressed  before  the  tiny  mirror,  she  con- 
sidered her  attractive  young  body  with  a  delicious  sense 
of  mystery  that  would  some  day  be  revealed,  then  plunged 
into  bed,  and-  buried  herself  chastely  beneath  the  cover,  her 
heart  throbbing. 

If  Milly  had  had  any  real  education,  she  might  have  re- 
called the  teaching  of  science  in  such  moments  and  realized 
that  her  soft  tissue  was  composed  of  common  elements,  her 
special  function  was  but  a  universal  means  to  a  universal 
end ;  that  even  her  long,  thick  hair  with  its  glint  of  gold,  her 
soft  eyes,  her  creamy  skin  and  rounding  breasts  and  sloping 
thighs  were  all  designed  for  the  simple  purpose  of  continuing 
the  species.  (But  in  those  days  they  did  not  talk  of  such 
things  even  in  the  handbooks,  and  Milly  would  have  called 
any  one  who  dared  mention  them  in  her  presence  a  "mate- 
rialist"—  a  word  she  had  heard  in  the  philosophy  class.) 
Having  no  one  to  mention  to  her  such  improper  truths,  she 
remained  in  the  pleasant  illusion  of  literature  and  religion 
that  she  was  altogether  a  superior  creation,  —  something 
mysterious  to  be  worshipped  and  preserved.  Not  colored 
Jenny  in  the  kitchen,  who  had  three  or  four  illegitimate 
children  !  Not  even  all  the  girls  in  her  Sunday-school  class, 
some  of  whom  worked  in  stores,  but  the  cultivated,  refined 
women  who  made  Homes  for  Heroes.  This  belief  was  like 
Poetry :  it  satisfied  and  sustained  —  and  it  gave  an  uncon- 
scious impulse  to  her  whole  life,  that  she  was  never  able 
wholly  to  escape.  .  .  . 

And  this  was  what  they  called  Education  in  those  days. 


MILLY    EXPERIMENTS 

OF  course  Milly  had  "beaux,"  as  she  called  them  then. 
There  had  never  been  a  time  since  she  was  trusted  to  navigate 
herself  alone  upon  the  street  when  she  had  not  attracted  to 
herself  other  little  persons — chiefly  girls,  to  be  sure.  For  as 
Milly  was  wont  to  confess  in  her  palmiest  days  when  men 
flocked  around  her,  she  was  a  "woman's  woman"  (and  hence 
inferentially  a  man's  woman,  too).  Milly  very  sincerely 
preferred  her  own  sex  as  constant  companions.  They  were 
more  expressive,  communicative,  rational.  Men  were  use- 
ful :  they  brought  candies,  flowers,  theatre  parties. 

But  now  the  era  of  young  men  as  distinguished  from  girls 
had  arrived.  Boys  in  long  trousers  with  dark  upper  lips 
hung  about  the  West  Laurence  Avenue  house  on  warm  even- 
ings, composing  Milly's  celebrated  "stoop  parties,"  or 
wandered  with  her  arm  in  arm  up  the  broad  boulevard  to 
the  Park.  And  at  the  Claxtons  and  the  Kemps  she  met 
older  men  who  paid  attention  to  the  vivacious,  well-developed 
school-girl. 

"Milly  will  take  care  of  herself,"  Mrs.  Claxton  remarked 
to  her  daughter  when  the  school  question  was  up,  and  when 
the  latter  deplored  the  unchaperoned  condition  of  her  young 
friend,  she  added,  — 

"That  was  the  way  in  Virginia.     A  girl  had  a  lot  of  beaux 
—  and  she  got  no  harm  from  it,  if  she  were  a  good  girl." 

34 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  35 

Milly  was  a  good  girl  without  any  doubt,  astonishing  as 
it  may  seem.  Milly  Ridge  had  passed  through  the  seven- 
teen years  of  her  existence  and  at  least  four  different  public 
schools  without  knowing  anything  about  "sex  hygiene." 
That  married  women  had  babies  and  that  somehow  these 
were  due  to  the  presence  of  men  in  the  household  was  the 
limit  of  her  sex  knowledge.  Beyond  that  it  was  not  "nice" 
for  a  girl  to  delve,  and  Milly  was  very  scrupulous  about 
being  "nice."  Nice  girls  did  not  discuss  such  things.  Once 
when  she  was  fifteen  a  woman  she  knew  had  "gone  to  the 
bad"  and  Milly  had  been  very  curious  about  it,  as  she  was 
later  about  the  existence  of  bad  women  generally.  This 
state  of  virginal  ignorance  was  due  more  to  her  normal 
health  than  to  any  superior  delicacy.  As  one  man  mean- 
ingly insinuated,  Milly  was  not  yet  "awake."  He  appar- 
ently desired  the  privilege  of  awakening  her,  but  she  eluded 
him  safely. 

When  these  older  men  began  to  call,  Milly  entertained 
them  quite  formally  in  the  little  front  room,  discussing 
books  with  them  and  telling  her  little  stories,  while  her 
father  smoked  his  cigar  in  the  rear  room.  She  was  con- 
scious always  of  Grandma  Ridge's  keen  ears  pricked  to 
attention  behind  the  smooth  curls  of  gray  hair.  It  was 
astonishing  how  much  the  old  lady  could  overhear  and 
misinterpret !  .  . 

Almost  all  these  young  men,  clerks  and  drummers  and 
ranchers,  were  hopelessly,  stupidly  dull,  and  Milly  knew  it. 
Their  idea  of  entertainment  was  the  theatre  or  lopping  about 
the  long  steps,  listening  to  her  chatter.  When  they  took  her 
"buggy-riding,"  they  might  try  clumsily  to  put  their  arms 


36  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

around  her.  She  would  pretend  not  to  notice  and  lean  for- 
ward slightly  to  avoid  the  embrace.  .  .  . 

Her  first  really  sentimental  encounter  came  at  the  end  of 
a  long  day's  picnicking  on  the  hot  sands  of  the  lake  beach. 
Harold  —  ultimately  she  forgot  his  last  name  —  had  taken 
her  up  the  shore  after  supper.  They  had  scrambled  to  the 
top  of  the  clayey  bluff  and  sat  there  in  a  thicket,  looking  out 
over  the  dimpled  water,  hot,  uncomfortable,  self-conscious. 
His  hand  had  strayed  to  hers,  and  she  had  let  him  hold  it, 
caress  the  stubby  fingers  in  his  thin  ones,  aware  that  hers 
was  quite  a  homely  hand,  her  poorest  "  point."  She  knew 
somehow  that  he  wanted  to  kiss  her,  and  she  wondered  what 
she  should  do  if  he  tried,  —  whether  she  should  be  offended 
or  let  him  "just  once."  He  was  a  handsome,  bashful  boy, 
and  she  felt  fond  of  him. 

But  when  he  had  got  his  courage  to  the  point,  she  drew 
off  quickly,  and  to  distract  his  attention  exclaimed,  —  "See  ! 
What's  that?"  They  looked  across  the  broad  surface  of 
the  lake  and  saw  a  tiny  rim  of  pure  gold  swell  upwards  from 
the  waves. 

"It's  just  the  moon!" 

"How  beautiful  it  is,"  Milly  sighed. 

Again  when  his  arm  came  stealing  about  her  she  moved 
away  murmuring,  "No,  no."  And  so  they  went  back,  awk- 
wardly silent,  to  the  others,  who  were  telling  stories  about 
a  blazing  camp-fire  they  had  thought  it  proper  to  build.  .  .  . 
After  that  Harold  came  to  see  her  quite  regularly,  and 
at  last  declared  his  love  in  a  stumbling,  boyish  fashion.  But 
Milly  dismissed  him  —  he  was  only  a  clerk  at  Hoppers' — 
without  hesitation.  "We  are  both  too  young,  dear,"  she 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  37 

said.  He  had  tried  to  kiss  her  hand,  and  somehow  he  managed 
so  awkwardly  that  their  heads  bumped.  Then  he  had  gone 
away  to  Colorado  to  recover.  For  some  months  they  ex- 
changed boy  and  girl  letters,  which  she  kept  for  years  tied 
up  with  ribbon.  After  a  time  he  ceased  to  write,  and  she 
thought  nothing  of  it,  as  .her  busy  little  world  was  peopled 
with  new  figures.  Then  there  came  wedding  cards  from 
Denver  and  at  first  she  could  not  remember  who  this  Harold 
Stevens  about  to  marry  Miss  Glazier,  could  be.  Her  first 
affair,  a  pallid  little  romance  that  had  not  given  her  any  real 
excitement ! 

Afterwards  in  moods  of  retrospection  Milly  would  say: 
"  However  I  didn't  get  into  trouble  as  a  girl,  with  no  mother, 
and  such  an  easy,  unsuspecting  father,  I  don't  know.  Think 
of  it,  my  dear,  out  almost  every  night,  dances,  rides,  picnics, 
theatres.  Perhaps  the  men  were  better  those  days  or  the 
girls  more  innocent." 

There  was  one  episode,  however,  of  these  earlier  years  that 
left  a  deeper  mark. 


VI 

MILLY   LEARNS 

THE  friend  who  at  the  opportune  moment  had  offered 
Horatio  his  point  of  stability  at  Hoppers'  was  Henry  Snow- 
den,  —  a  handsome,  talkative  man  of  forty-five.  He  was 
manager  of  a  department  in  the  mail-order  house,  with  the 
ambition  of  becoming  one  of  the  numerous  firm.  It  was  he 
who  had  put  Horatio  in  the  hands  of  the  real  estate  firm  that 
had  resulted  in  the  West  Laurence  Avenue  House.  Snow- 
den,  with  his  wife  and  two  grown  children,  lived  up  the  Boule- 
vard, some  distance  from  the  Kemps.  Mrs.  Snowden  was 
a  rather  fat  lady  a  few  years  older  than  her  husband,  with  a 
mid-western  nasal  voice.  Milly  thought  her  "  common, " 
—  a  word  she  had  learned  from  Eleanor  Kemp,  —  and  the 
daughter,  who  was  in  one  of  the  lower  classes  of  the  Insti- 
tute, was  like  her  mother.  During  the  first  months  in 
Chicago  the  Snowdens  were  the  people  Milly  saw  most  of. 

Horatio  liked  to  have  the  Snowdens  in  for  what  he  called  a 
"quiet  rubber  of  whist"  with  a  pitcher  of  cider,  a  box  of 
cheap  cigars,  and  a  plate  of  apples  on  the  table.  Grandma 
Ridge  sat  in  the  dining-room,  reading  her  Christian  Vindicator, 
while  Milly  entertained  her  friends  on  the  steps  or  visited  at 
the  Kemps.  Occasionally  she  was  induced  to  take  a  hand  in 
the  game.  She  liked  Mr.  Snowden.  He  was  more  the  gentle- 
man than  most  of  her  father's  business  friends.  With  his 

38 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  39 

trim,  grizzled  mustache  and  his  eye-glass  he  looked  almost  pro- 
fessional, she  thought.  He  treated  Milly  gallantly,  brought 
her  flowers  occasionally,  and  took  her  with  his  daughter  to 
the  theatre.  He  seemed  much  younger  than  his  wife,  and 
Milly  rather  pitied  him  for  being  married  to  her.  She  felt 
that  it  must  have  been  a  mistake  of  his  youth.  Her  father 
was  proud  of  the  friendship  and  would  repeat  often,  — 
"Snow's  a  smart  man,  I  can  tell  you.  There's  a  great 
future  for  Snow  at  Hoppers'." 

The  Snowdens  had  an  old-fashioned  house  with  a  stable, 
and  kept  a  horse.  Mr.  Snowden  was  fond  of  driving,  and 
had  always  a  fast  horse.  He  would  come  on  a  Saturday 
afternoon  or  Sunday  and  take  Ridge  for  a  drive.  One 
Saturday  afternoon  he  drove  up  to  the  house,  and  seeing 
Milly  in  the  front  window  —  it  was  a  warm  April  day  of 
their  second  year  —  motioned  her  to  come  outside. 

"Papa  is  not  home  yet,"  she  said,  patting  the  horse. 

"I  know  he  isn't,"  Snowden  remarked  jerkily.  "Didn't 
come  for  him  —  came  for  you  —  jump  in  !" 

Milly  looked  at  him  joyously  with  her  glowing,  child's 
eyes. 

"  Really  ?     You  want  me  !    But  I'm  not  dressed." 

"You're  all  right  —  jump  in  —  it's  warm  enough."  And 
Milly  without  further  urging  got  into  the  buggy. 

They  went  out  through  the  boulevard  to  the  new  park- 
way, and  when  they  reached  the  broad  open  road  in  the  park, 
Snowden  let  his  horse  out,  and  they  spun  for  a  mile  or  more 
breathlessly.  Milly's  cheeks  glowed,  and  her  eyes  danced. 
She  was  afraid  that  he  might  turn  back  at  the  end  of  the 
drive.  But  he  kept  on  into  a  region  that  was  almost  country. 


40  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Snowden  talked  in  nervous  sentences  about  the  horse,  then 
about  Horatio,  who,  he  said,  was  doing  finely  in  the  business. 
" He'll  get  on,"  he  said,  and  Milly  felt  that  Mr.  Snowden  was 
the  family's  good  genius. 

"He's  a  good  fellow  —  I  suppose  he'll  marry  again,  one 
of  these  days." 

"No,  he  won't !"  Milly  replied  promptly.  "Not  so  long 
as  he  has  me." 

"What'll  he  do  when  he  loses  you?" 

"He  won't  lose  me." 

"Oh,  you'll  be  married,  Milly,  'fore  you  know  it." 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Not  until  I  meet  the  right  man,"  she  said,  and  she  ex- 
plained volubly  her  lofty  ideals  of  matrimony. 

Snowden  agreed  with  her.  He  became  personal,  confiding,- 
insinuated  even  that  his  marriage  had  been  a  mistake  —  of 
ignorance  and  youth.  Milly,  who  was  otherwise  sympathetic, 
thought  this  was  not  nice  of  him,  even  if  Mrs.  Snowden  was 
pudgy  and  common  and  old.  A  woman  gave  so  much,  she 
felt,  in  marriage  that  she  should  be  insured  against  her  de- 
fects. .  .  .  Snowden  said  that  he  was  living  for  his  children. 
Milly  thought  that  quite  right  and  tried  to  turn  the  con- 
versation. 

The  horse  looked  around  as  if  to  ask  how  much  farther 
his  master  meant  to  go  over  this  rough  country  road.  It 
was  getting  late  and  the  sun  was  sinking  towards  the  flat 
prairie.  Milly  began  to  feel  unaccountably  worried  and 
suggested  turning  back.  Instead  the  man  cut  the  horse 
with  his  whip  so  that  he  shot  forward  down  the  narrow  road. 
The  buggy  rocked  and  swayed,  while  Milly  clung  to  the 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  41 

side.  Snowden  looked  at  her  and  smiled  triumphantly. 
His  face  came  nearer  hers.  Milly  thought  it  handsome,  but 
it  was  unpleasantly  flushed,  and  Milly  drew  away. 

Suddenly  she  found  herself  in  the  grasp  of  her  companion's 
free  arm.  He  was  whispering  things  into  her  ear. 

"  You  make  me  mad  —  I  — " 

"Don't,  Mr.  Snowden,  —  please,  please  don't!"  Milly 
cried,  struggling. 

The  horse  stopped  altogether  and  looked  around  at 
them. 

"Let  me  go  !"  she  cried.  But  now  abandoning  the  lines 
he  held  her  in  both  his  arms,  his  hot  breath  was  close  to  her 
face,  his  lips  seeking  hers.  Then  she  bit  him,  —  bit  him  so 
hard  with  her  firm  teeth  that  he  drew  away  with  a  cry, 
loosening  his  grip.  She  wriggled  out  of  his  embrace  and 
scrambled  to  the  ground  before  he  knew  what  she  was  doing 
and  began  to  run  down  the  road.  Snowden  gathered  up 
the  lines  and  followed  after  her,  calling,  —  "Milly,  Milly  — 
Miss  Ridge,"  in  a  penitent,  frightened  voice.  For  some  time 
she  paid  no  attention  until  he  shouted,  —  "You'll  never  get 
anywhere  that  way  ! "  The  buggy  was  abreast  of  her  now. 
"Do  get  in!  I  won't  —  touch  you." 

She  turned  upon  him  with  all  the  fire  of  her  youth. 

"You  —  a  respectable  man  —  with  a  wife  —  and  my 
father's  friend  —  you  !" 

"Yes,  I  know,"  he  said,  like  a  whipped  dog.  "But  don't 
run  off  —  I'll  get  out  and  let  you  drive  back  alone." 

There  was  a  cart  coming  on  slowly  behind  them.  Milly 
marched  past  the  buggy  haughtily  and  walked  towards  it. 
Snowden  followed  close  behind,  pleading,  apologizing.  She 


42  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

knew  that  he  was  afraid  she  would  speak  to  the  driver  of  the 
cart,  and  despised  him. 

"Milly,  don't,"  he  groaned. 

She  walked  stiffly  by  the  cart,  whose  driver  eyed  the  scene 
with  a  slow  grin.  She  paid  no  attention,  however,  to  Snow- 
den's  entreaties.  She  was  secretly  proud  of  herself  for  her 
magnanimity  in  not  appealing  to  the  stranger,  for  the  manner 
in  which  she  was  conducting  herself.  But  after  a  mile  or  so, 
it  became  quite  dark  and  she  felt  weary.  She  stumbled,  sat 
down  beside  the  road.  The  buggy  stopped  automatically. 

"If  you'll  only  get  in  and  drive  home,  Miss  Ridge,"  Snow- 
den  said  humbly,  and  prepared  to  dismount.  "It's  a  good 
eight  miles  to  the  boulevard  and  your  folks  will  be  worried." 

With  a  gesture  that  waved  him  back  to  his  place  Milly 
got  into  the  buggy  and  the  horse  started. 

"I  didn't  mean  —  I  am  sorry  — " 

"Don't  speak  to  me  ever  again,  Mr.  Snowden,"  Milly 
flamed.  She  sat  bolt  upright  in  her  corner  of  the  seat,  draw- 
ing her  skirt  under  her  as  if  afraid  it  might  touch  him. 
Snowden  drove  rapidly,  and  thus  without  a  word  exchanged 
they  returned.  As  they  came  near  the  corner  of  West 
Laurence  Avenue,  Snowden  spoke  again,  — 

"  I  know  you  can't  forgive  me  —  but  I  hope  you  won't  let 
your  father  know.  It  would  hurt  him  and  — " 

It  was  a  very  mean  thing  to  say,  and  she  knew  it.  After- 
wards she  thought  of  many  spirited  and  apposite  words  she 
might  have  spoken,  but  at  the  moment  all  she  could  do  was 
to  fling  herself  haughtily  out  of  the  buggy  as  it  drew  up  before 
the  curb  and  without  a  word  or  glance  march  stiffly  up  the 
steps,  where  her  father  sat  smoking  his  after-dinner  cigar. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  43 

"Why,  Milly,"  he  exclaimed,  "where've  you  been?" 

She  stalked  past  him  into  the  house.  She  could  hear  her 
father  ask  Snowden  to  stop  and  have  some  supper,  and 
Snowden's  refusal. 

"You'll  be  over  for  a  game  later,  Snow?" 

"Guess  not,  Horace,"  and  the  buggy  drove  off. 

Then  for  the  first  time  it  came  over  her  what  it  would 
mean  if  she  should  follow  her  first  impulse  and  tell  her  father 
what  had  happened.  Mr.  Snowden  was  not  merely  his  most 
intimate  friend,  but  in  a  way  his  superior.  If  she  should  make 
things  unpleasant  between  them,  it  might  be  serious.  So 
when  her  grandmother  came  tiptoeing  into  Milly's  room  to 
see  why  she  did  not  come  down  for  her  supper,  Milly  merely 
said  she  was  too  tired  to  eat. 

"What's  happened?" 

"That  nasty  Snowden  man,"  Milly  spluttered,  "tried  to 
kiss  me  and  I  had  to — to  fight  him.  .  .  .  Don't  tell  father  !" 

The  little  old  lady  was  very  much  disturbed,  but  she  did 
not  tell  her  son.  Her  policy  was  one  of  discreet  silence  about 
"unpleasant  things"  if  they  could  be  covered  up.  And  this 
was  the  kind  of  event  that  women  were  capable  of  managing 
themselves,  as  Milly  had  managed.  .  .  . 

Milly  lay  awake  long  hours  that  night,  her  heart  beating 
loudly,  her  busy  mind  reviewing  the  experience,  and  though 
her  resentment  did  not  lessen  as  the  hours  wore  on  and  she 
murmured  to  herself,  —  "Horrid,  nasty  beast!"  yet  she 
became  aware  of  another  sensation.  If  —  if  things  had  been 
different  —  she  —  well  —  it  —  might,  and  then  she  buried 
her  head  in  the  pillow  more  ashamed  than  ever. 

At  last  she  had  learned  something  of  the  real  nature  of  men, 


44  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

and  never  again  in  her  long  experience  with  the  other  sex  was 
she  unaware  of  "what  things  meant."  Whenever  a  man  was 
concerned,  one  must  always  expect  this  possibility.  And 
she  began  to  despise  the  weaker  sex. 

For  some  days  the  Snowdens  did  not  come  for  cards. 
Horatio  seemed  depressed.  He  would  sit  reading  his  paper 
through  to  the  small  advertisements,  or  wander  out  by  him- 
self to  a  beer  garden  near  by.  When  the  social  circle  is  as 
small  as  the  Ridges',  such  a  state  of  affairs  means  real  depri- 
vation, and  Milly,  who  did  not  approve  of  the  beer  garden  any 
more  than  did  her  grandmother,  wondered  how  she  could 
restore  the  old  harmony  between  the  two  families. 

But  before  anything  came  of  her  good-natured  intention 
fate  arranged  pleasantly  to  relieve  her  of  the  responsibility. 


VII 

MILLY   SEES   MORE   OF   THE   WORLD 

THE  Kemps  had  a  cottage  at  one  of  the  Wisconsin  lakes, 
and  Eleanor  Kemp  invited  Milly  to  make  them  a  month's 
visit.  The  girl's  imagination  was  aflame  with  excitement : 
it  was  to  her  Newport  or  Bar  Harbor  or  Aix.  There  was 
first  the  question  of  clothes.  Although  Mrs.  Kemp  assured 
her  that  they  lived  very  quietly  at  Como,  Milly  knew  that 
the  Casses,  the  Gilberts,  the  Shards  had  summer  homes 
there,  and  the  place  was  as  gay  as  anything  hi  this  part  of 
the  country.  Mrs.  Kemp  might  say,  "Milly,  you're  pretty 
enough  for  any  place  just  as  you  are!"  But  Milly  was 
woman  enough  to  know  what  that  meant  between  women. 

Her  allowance  was  spent,  four  months  in  advance  as  usual, 
but  Horatio  was  easily  brought  to  see  the  exceptionality  of 
this  event,  and  even  old  Mrs.  Ridge  was  moved  to  give  from 
her  hoard.  It  was  felt  to  be  something  in  the  nature  of  an 
investment  for  the  girl's  future.  So  Milly  departed  with  a 
new  trunk  and  a  number  of  fresh  summer  gowns. 

"Have  a  good  time,  daughter!"  Horatio  Ridge  shouted 
as  the  car  moved  off,  and  he  thought  he  had  done  his  best  for 
his  child,  even  if  he  had  had  to  borrow  a  hundred  dollars  from 
his  friend  Snowden. 

Milly  was  sure  she  was  about  to  have  the  most  wonderful 
experience  of  her  life. 

Afterwards  she  might  laugh  over  the  excitement  that  first 

45 


46  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

country-house  visit  had  caused,  and  recall  the  ugly  little 
brown  gabled  cottage  on  the  shore  of  the  hot  lake,  that  did 
not  even  faintly  resemble  its  Italian  namesake,  with  the 
simple  diversions  of  driving  about  the  dusty,  flat  country, 
varied  by  " veranda  parties"  and  moonlight  rows  with  the 
rare  young  men  who  dared  to  stay  away  from  business 
through  the  week.  All  of  life,  the  sages  tell  us,  is  largely  a 
matter  of  proportion.  Como,  Wisconsin,  was  breathless  ex- 
citement to  Milly  Ridge  at  eighteen,  as  she  testified  to  her 
hostess  in  a  thousand  joyous  little  ways. 

And  there  was  the  inevitable  man,  —  a  cousin  of  the  Clax- 
ton  tribe,  who  was  a  young  lawyer  in  Baltimore.  He  spent 
a  week  at  the  lake,  almost  every  minute  with  Milly. 

"  You've  simply  fascinated  him,  my  dear,"  Eleanor  Kemp 
reported,  delightedly.  "And  they're  very  good  people,  I 
assure  you  —  he's  a  Harvard  man." 

It  was  the  first  time  Milly  had  met  on  intimate  terms  a 
graduate  of  a  large  university.  In  those  days  " Harvard" 
and  "Yale"  were  titles  of  aristocratic  magic,  as  good  as 
Rome  or  Oxford. 

"He  thinks  you  so  unspoiled,"  her  friend  added.  "I've 
asked  him  to  stay  another  week." 

So  the  two  boated  and  walked  and  sat  out  beside  the  lake 
until  the  stars  grew  dim  —  and  nothing  ever  came  of  it ! 
Milly  had  her  little  extravagant  imaginings  about  this  well- 
bred  young  man  with  his  distinguished  manner ;  she  did  her 
best  to  please  —  and  nothing  came  of  it.  Why  ?  she  asked 
herself  afterward.  He  had  held  her  hand  and  talked  about 
"the  woman  who  gives  purpose  to  a  man's  life"  and  all 
that.  (Alas,  that  plebeian  paw  of  Milly's  !) 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  47 

Then  he  had  left  and  sent  her  a  five-pound  box  of  candy 
from  the  metropolis,  with  a  correct  little  note,  assuring  her 
that  he  could  never  forget  those  days  he  had  spent  with 
her  by  the  lake  of  Como.  Years  afterward  on  an  Atlantic 
steamer  she  met  a  sandy-haired,  stoutish  American,  who 
introduced  himself  with  the  apology,  — 

"  You're  so  like  a  girl  I  knew  once  out  West  —  at  some 
lake  in  Wisconsin  — " 

"And  you  are  Harrison  Plummer,"  she  said  promptly. 
"I  shouldn't  have  known  you''  she  added  maliciously, 
surveying  the  work  of  time.  She  felt  that  her  plebeian  hands 
were  revenged :  he  was  quite  ordinary.  His  wife  was 
with  him  and  four  uninteresting  children,  and  he  seemed 
bored.  .  .  .  That  had  been  her  Alpine  height  at  eighteen. 
The  heights  seem  lower  at  thirty-five. 

Even  if  this  affair  didn't  prove  to  be  "the  real,  right 
thing,"  Milly  gained  a  good  deal  from  her  Como  visit. 
Her  social  perspective  was  greatly  enlarged  by  the  acquaint- 
ances she  made  there.  It  was  long  before  the  day  of  the 
motor,  the  launch,  the  formal  .house  party,  but  the  families 
who  sought  rural  relief  from  the  city  along  the  shores  of  the 
Wisconsin  lake  lived  in  a  liberal,  easy  manner.  They  had 
horses  and  carriages  a  plenty  and  entertained  hospitably. 
They  did  not  use  red  cotton  table-cloths  (which  Grandma 
Ridge  insisted  upon  to  save  washing),  and  if  there  were  few 
men-servants,  there  was  an  abundance  of  tidy  maids.  It 
gave  Milly  unconsciously  a  conception  of  how  people  lived 
in  circles  remote  from  West  Laurence  Avenue,  and  behind 
her  pretty  eyes  there  formed  a  blind  purpose  of  pushing  on 
into  this  unknown  territory.  "I  had  my  own  way  to  make 


48  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

socially/'  she  said  afterwards,  half  in  apology,  half  in  pride. 
"I  had  no  mother  to  bring  me  out  in  society  —  I  had  to 
make  my  own  friends  !" 

It  was  easy,  to  be  sure,  in  those  days  for  a  pretty,  viva- 
cious girl  with  pleasant  manners  to  go  where  she  would. 
Society  was  democratic,  in  a  flux,  without  pretence.  Like 
went  with  like  as  they  always  will,  but  the  social  game  was 
very  simple,  not  a  definite  career,  even  for  a  woman.  Many 
of  these  good  people  said  " folks"  and  "ain't"  and  "doos," 
and  nobody  thought  the  worse  of  them  for  that.  And  they 
were  kind,  —  quick  to  help  a  young  and  attractive  girl, 
who  "would  make  a  good  wife  for  some  man." 

So  after  her  month  with  Mrs.  Kemp  Milly  was  urged  to 
spend  a  week  at  the  Gilberts,  which  easily  stretched  to  two. 
The  Gilberts  were  young  "North  Side"  people,  and  much 
richer  than  the  Kemps.  Roy  Gilbert  had  the  rare  distinc- 
tion in  those  days  of  describing  himself  merely  as  "capital- 
ist," thanks  to  his  father's  exertions  and  denials.  He  was 
lazy  and  good-natured  and  much  in  love  with  his  young  wife, 
who  was  unduly  religious  and  hoped  to  "steady"  Milly. 
Apart  from  this  obsession  she  was  an  affectionate  and  pretty 
woman,  rather  given  to  rich  food  and  sentimental  novels. 
She  had  been  a  poor  girl  herself,  of  a  good  New  York  family, 
and  life  had  not  been  easy  until  one  fine  day  Roy  Gilbert  had 
sailed  into  Watch  Hill  on  his  yacht  and  fallen  in  love  with 
her.  Some  such  destiny,  she  hoped,  would  come  to  Milly 
Ridge.  .  .  . 

When  at  last,  one  drearily  hot  September  day,  Milly  got 
back  to  the  little  box  of  a  house  on  West  Laurence  Avenue, 
home  seemed  unendurably  sordid  and  mean,  stifling.  Her 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  49 

father  was  sitting  on  the  stoop  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  and  had 
eased  his  feet  by  pushing  off  his  shoes.  Discipline  had  grown 
lax  in  Milly's  absence.  Her  first  sensation  of  revolt  came  at 
that  moment. 

"Oh,  father  —  you  oughtn't  to  look  like  that !"  she  said, 
kissing  him. 

"What's  the  harm?  Nobody's  home  'round  here.  All 
your  swell  friends  are  at  the  seashore." 

"But,  father!" 

"Well,  Milly,  so  you  decided  to  come  home  at  last?" 

Grandma  Ridge  had  crept  out  from  the  house  and  was 
smiling  icily.  Secretly  both  the  older  people  were  pleased 
with  Milly's  social  success,  but  they  tempered  their  feelings 
in  good  puritan  fashion  with  a  note  of  reproof. 

That  evening  the  Snowdens  came  in  for  the  game  of  cards. 
Snowden  was  plainly  embarrassed  at  meeting  Milly.  "Good 
evening,  Mr.  Snowden,  how  are  you?  and  Mrs.  Snowden?" 
she  asked  graciously,  with  her  new  air  of  aloofness,  as  if  he 
were  an  utter  stranger.  "You've  come  to  play  cards.  I'm 
so  glad  —  papa  enjoys  having  you  so  much!" 

She  felt  that  she  was  handling  the  situation  like  a  perfect 
lady,  and  she  no  longer  had  any  real  resentment.  She  even 
consented  to  take  a  hand  in  the  game.  They  were  much 
excited  about  an  atrocious  murder  that  had  happened  only 
a  few  doors  away.  Old  Leonard  Sweet,  who  had  grown  rich 
in  the  contracting  business,  had  been  found  dead  in  his 
kitchen.  His  son-in-law  —  a  dissipated  young  man  whom 
Milly  knew  slightly  —  was  suspected  of  the  crime.  It  was 
thought  that  the  two  had  had  a  quarrel  about  money,  and  the 
young  man  had  shot  his  father-in-law.  Milly  remembered 


50  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

old  Sweet  quite  vividly.  He  used  to  sit  on  his  stoop  in  his 
stocking  feet,  even  on  Sundays  when  all  the  neighborhood 
was  going  by  to  church,  —  very  shocking  to  Milly's  sense  of 
propriety.  And  the  boy  had  hung  around  saloons.  Now 
where  was  he  ? 

"Well,  daughter,  can't  you  tell  us  what  you  did  at  Co-mo  ?  " 
Horatio  urged.  .  .  . 

No,  decidedly,  this  sort  of  thing  would  not  do  for  Milly ! 


VIII 


ALMOST  at  once  Milly  began  the  first  important  campaign 
of  her  life  —  to  move  the  household  to  a  more  advantageous 
neighborhood.  One  morning  she  said  casually  at  breakfast,  — 

"The  Kemps  are  going  to  their  new  house  when  they  come 
in  from  the  Lake.  .  .  .  Why  can't  we  live  some  place  where 
there  are  nice  people  ?" 

" What's  the  matter  with  this?"  Horatio  asked,  crowding 
flannel  cakes  into  his  mouth. 

"Oh!"  Milly  exclaimed  witheringly.  "My  friends  are 
all  moving  away." 

"You  forget  that  your  father  has  two  years  more  of  his 
lease  of  this  house,"  her  grandmother  remarked  severely. 

And  the  campaign  was  on,  not  to  be  relaxed  until  the 
family  abandoned  the  West  Side  a  year  later.  It  was  a  cam- 
paign fought  in  many  subtle  feminine  ways,  chiefly  between 
Milly  and  her  grandmother.  Needless  to  say,  the  family 
atmosphere  was  not  always  comfortable  for  the  mild  Horatio. 

"It  all  comes  of  your  ambition  to  go  with  rich  people," 
Mrs.  Ridge  declared.  "Since  your  visit  at  the  Lake,  you 
have  been  discontented." 

"I  was  never  contented  with  this!"  Milly  retorted  quite 
truthfully.  What  the  old  lady  regarded  as  a  fault,  Milly 
considered  a  virtue. 

51 


52  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"And  you  are  neglecting  your  church  work  to  go  to 
parties." 

"Oh,  grandma  !"  the  girl  exclaimed  wearily.  "Chicago 
isn't  Euston,  Pa.,  grandma  !" 

As  if  the  young  people's  clubs  of  the  Second  Presbyterian 
Church  could  satisfy  the  social  aspirations  of  a  Milly  Ridge  ! 
She  was  fast  becoming  conscious  of  the  prize  that  had  been 
given  her  —  her  charm  and  her  beauty  —  and  an  indefinable 
force  was  driving  her  on  to  obtain  the  necessary  means  of 
self -exploitation. 

It  was  true,  as  her  grandmother  said,  that  more  and  more 
this  autumn  Milly  was  away  from  her  home.  Mrs.  Gilbert 
had  not  forgotten  her,  nor  the  other  people  she  had  met  at 
the  Lake.  More  and  more  she  was  being  asked  to  dinners 
and  dances,  and  spent  many  nights  with  good-natured 
friends. 

"She  might  as  well  board  over  there,"  Horatio  remarked 
forlornly,  "  for  all  I  see  of  the  girl." 

"Milly  is  a  selfish  girl,"  her  grandmother  commented 
severely. 

"She's  young,  and  she  wants  her  fling.  Guess  we'd  better 
see  if  we  can't  give  it  to  her,  mother." 

Horatio  was  no  fighter,  especially  of  his  own  womenkind. 
Even  the  old  lady's  judgment  was  disturbed  by  the  dazzle 
of  Milly's  social  conquests. 

"She'll  be  married  before  long,"  they  said. 

Meanwhile  Milly  was  learning  the  fine  social  distinctions 
between  the  south  and  the  north  sides  of  the  city.  The 
Kemps'  new  house  on  Granger  Avenue  was  very  rich  and 
handsome  like  its  many  substantial  neighbors,  but  Milly 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  53 

already  knew  enough  to  prefer  the  Gilberts'  on  the  North 
Drive,  which,  if  smaller,  had  more  style.  And  in  spite  of 
all  the  miles  of  solid  prosperity  and  comfort  in  the  great 
south  side  of  the  city,  Milly  quickly  perceived  that  the  really 
nicest  people  had  tucked  themselves  in  along  the  north  shore. 

Somewhere  about  this  time  Milly  acquired  two  lively 
young  friends,  Sally  and  Vivie  Norton,  daughters  of  a  rail- 
road man  who  had  recently  been  moved  to  Chicago  from  the 
East.  Sally  Norton  was  small  and  blonde  and  gay.  She 
laughed  overmuch.  Vivie  was  tall  and  sentimental,  —  a 
brunette.  They  came  once  to  the  West  Laurence  Avenue 
house  for  Sunday  supper.  Horatio  did  not  like  the  sisters; 
he  called  them  in  his  simple  way  "Giggle"  and  "Simper." 
The  Nortons  lived  not  far  from  the  Lake  on  East  Acacia 
Street,  and  that  became  for  Milly  the  symbol  of  the  all- 
desirable.  She  spoke  firmly  of  the  advantages  of  East 
Acacia  Street  as  a  residence — she  had  even  picked  out  the 
house,  the  last  but  one  in  the  same  row  of  stone-front  boxes 
where  the  Nortons  lived. 

It  made  Horatio  restless.  Like  a  good  father  he  wished 
to  indulge  his  only  child  in  every  way — to  do  his  best  for 
her.  But  with  his  salary  of  three  thousand  dollars  he  could 
barely  give  Milly  the  generous  allowance  she  needed  and 
always  spent  in  advance.  Rise  at  Hoppers'  was  slow,  al- 
though sure,  and  the  only  way  for  him  to  enlarge  Milly's 
horizon  was  by  going  into  business  for  himself.  He  began 
to  talk  of  schemes,  said  he  was  tired  of  "working  for  others 
all  his  life."  Milly's  ambitions  were  contagious. 

After  one  of  the  family  conflicts,  Grandma  invaded  Milly's 
bedroom,  which  was  quite  irritating  to  the  young  woman. 


54  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"Mildred,"  she  began  ominously.  "Do  you  realize  what 
you  are  doing  to  your  father?" 

"The  rent  is  only  thirty  dollars  a  month  more,  grandma," 
Milly  replied,  reverting  to  the  last  topic  under  discussion. 
"Papa  can  take  it  out  of  my  allowance."  (Milly  was  mag- 
nificently optimistic  about  the  expansiveness  of  her  allow- 
ance.) "Anyhow,  I  don't  see  why  I  can't  live  near  my 
friends  and  have  a  decent  — " 

The  old  lady's  lips  tightened. 

"In  my  days  young  girls  did  not  pretend  to  decide  where 
their  parents  should  live." 

"These  aren't  your  days,  grandma,  thank  heaven  !  .  .  . 
If  a  girl  is  going  to  get  anything  out  of  life  — " 

"You've  had  a  great  deal  — " 

"Thanks  to  the  friends  I've  made  for  myself." 

"It  might  be  better  if  you  cared  less  to  go  with  folks  above 
you—" 

"Above  me!"  the  exasperated  girl  flashed.  "Who's 
above  me?  Nelly  Kemp?  Sally  Norton?  —  Above  me!" 

That  was  the  flaming  note  of  Milly's  intense  Americanism. 
As  a  social,  human  being  she  recognized  no  superiors.  There 
were  richer,  cleverer,  better  educated  women,  no  doubt,  but 
in  this  year  of  salvation  and  hope,  1890,  there  were  none 
"above  her."  Never!  .  .  . 

Mrs.  Ridge  discreetly  shifted  the  point  of  attack. 

"It  might  be  disastrous  for  your  father  if  you  were  to 
break  up  his  home." 

"  You  talk  so  tragically,  grandma !  Who's  thinking  of 
breaking  up  homes?  Just  moving  a  couple  of  miles  across 
the  city  to  another  house  in  another  street.  What  difference 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  55 

does  it  make  to  a  man  what  old  house  he  comes  home  to 
after  his  work  is  done?" 

"You  forget  his  church  relations,  Milly." 

"You  seem  to  think  there  are  no  churches  on  the  North 
Side." 

"But  he's  made  his  place  here  —  and  Dr.  Barlow  has  a 
good  influence  upon  him." 

Milly  knew  quite  well  the  significance  of  these  words. 
There  had  been  a  time  when  Horatio  did  not  come  home  every 
night  sober,  and  did  not  go  to  church  on  Sundays.  When 
the  little  old  lady  wished  to  check  the  soaring  ambition  of 
her  granddaughter,  she  had  but  to  refer  to  this  dark  period 
in  the  Ridge  history.  Milly  did  not  like  to  think  of  those 
dreary  days,  and  was  inclined  to  put  the  responsibility  for 
them  upon  her  dead  mother.  "If  she'd  only  known  how  to 
manage  him — "  For  with  all  men  Milly  thought  it  was 
simply  a  question  of  management. 

"Well,"  she  announced  at  last.  "I'm  tired  and  want  to 
go  to  bed.  Come,  Cheriki,  darling !"  Cheriki  was  a  fuzzy 
toy  spaniel,  the  gift  of  an  admirer.  Milly  poked  the  animal 
from  her  bed,  and  the  old  lady,  who  loathed  dogs,  scuttled 
out  of  the  room.  She  had  been  routed  again.  Knowing 
Milly's  obstinate  nature,  she  felt  that  she  must  battle  daily 
for  the  right. 

But  Milly  did  not  return  to  the  attack  for  some  time.  She 
stayed  at  home  for  several  evenings  and  was  very  sweet  with 
her  father.  She  ostentatiously  refused  some  alluring  invi- 
tations and  was  quite  cheerful  about  it.  "She  must  give  up 
these  parties  —  she  could  not  always  be  accepting  the  Nor- 
tons'  hospitality,  etc."  But  Milly  was  not  a  nagger,  at 


56  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

least  not  with  men.  Hers  was  a  pleasant,  cheerful  nature, 
and  she  bathed  the  West  Laurence  Avenue  house  in  several 
beams  of  sunshine. 

"She's  a  good  girl,  mother,"  Horatio  said  proudly.  "And 
she's  all  we've  got.  It  would  be  a  pity  not  to  give  her  what 
she  wants." 

A  complete  expression  of  the  submissive  attitude  of  the 
new  parent ! 

"  It  may  not  be  good  for  her,"  Grandma  Ridge  objected, 
after  her  generation. 

"  Well,  if  she  only  marries  right." 

More  and  more  it  was  in  their  minds  that  Milly  was  des- 
tined to  make  "  a  great  match."  Purely  as  a  business  mat- 
ter that  must  be  taken  into  account.  So  Horatio  thought 
harder  about  getting  into  business  for  himself,  and  his  little 
corner  of  the  world  revolved  more  and  more  about  the  desires 
of  a  woman. 

Fortunately  for  the  peace  of  the  Ridge  household,  the 
Kemps  invited  Milly  to  go  to  New  York  with  them  in  the 
spring.  They  were  still  furnishing  the  new  house  and  had 
in  mind  some  pictures.  Mr.  Kemp  had  rather  "gone  in  for 
art"  of  late,  and  the  banking  business  had  been  good.  .  .  . 
To  Milly,  who  had  never  been  on  a  sleeping-car  in  her  life 
(the  Ridge  migrations  hitherto  having  been  accomplished  in 
day  coaches  because  of  economy  and  because  Grandma 
Ridge  dreaded  night  travel),  it  was  a  thrilling  prospect.  Her 
feeling  for  Eleanor  Kemp  had  been  dimmed  somewhat  by 
the  acquisition  of  newer  and  gayer  friends,  but  it  revived 
into  a  brilliant  glow. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  57 

"You  dear  thing!  .  .  .  You're  sure  I  won't  be  in  the 
way?  ...  It  will  be  too  heavenly  for  words  !" 

To  her  husband  Mrs.  Kemp  reported  Milly's  ecstasy 
laughingly,  saying,  - 

"If  any  one  can  enjoy  things  as  much  as  Milly  Ridge,  she 
ought  to  have  them,"  to  which  the  practical  banker  observed, 
—  "She'll  get  them  when  she  picks  the  man." 

So  they  made  the  wonderful  journey  and  put  up  at  the 
pleasant  old  Windsor  on  the  avenue,  for  the  era  of  vast 
caravansaries  had  not  yet  begun.  Fifth  Avenue  in  ninety 
was  not  the  cosmopolitan  thoroughfare  it  is  to-day.  Never- 
theless, to  Milly's  inexperienced  eyes,  accustomed  to  the 
gloom  of  smoke,  the  ill-paved,  dirty  streets  of  mid-western 
cities,  New  York  was  even  noble  in  its  splendor.  They 
went  to  the  Metropolitan  Museum,  to  the  private  galleries 
of  the  dealers,  to  Tiffany's,  where  the  banker  bought  a  trinket 
for  his  wife's  young  friend,  and  the  women  went  to  dress- 
makers who  intimidated  Milly  with  their  airs  and  their 
prices. 

Of  course  they  went  to  Daly's  and  to  hear  "Aida,"  and 
supped  afterwards  at  the  old  Delmonico's.  And  a  hundred 
other  ravishing  things  were  crowded  into  the  breathless 
fortnight  of  their  visit.  When  she  was  once  more  settled 
in  her  berth  for  the  return  journey,  Milly  sighed  with 
regret  and  envisaged  the  dreary  waste  of  West  Laurence 
Avenue. 

"If  we  only  lived  in  New  York,"  she  thought,  and  then 
she  was  wise  enough  to  reflect  that  if  the  Ridges  lived  in 
New  York,  it  would  not  be  paradise,  but  another  version  of 
West  Laurence  Avenue. 


58  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"Some  day  you  will  go  to  Paris,  my  dear,"  Mrs.  Kemp 
said,  "and  then  New  York  will  seem  like  the  West  Side." 

"Never,  that !"  Milly  exclaimed,  shocked. 

The  approach  to  Chicago  under  all  circumstances  is  bleak 
and  stern.  But  that  early  April  day  it  seemed  to  Milly 
unduly  depressing.  The  squalid  little  settlements  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  great  city  were  like  eruptions  in  the  low,  flat 
landscape.  Around  the  factories  and  mills  the  little  houses 
were  perched  high  on  stilts  to  keep  their  feet  out  of  the  mud 
of  the  submerged  prairie.  All  the  way  home  Milly  had  been 
making  virtuous  resolutions  not  to  be  extravagant  and  tease 
her  father,  to  be  patient  with  her  grandmother,  etc.,  —  in 
short,  to  be  content  with  that  state  of  life  unto  which  God  had 
called  her  (for  the  present),  as  the  catechism  says.  But  she 
felt  it  to  be  very  hard  that  Milly  Ridge  should  be  condemned 
to  such  a  state  of  life  as  the  West  Side  of  Chicago  afforded. 
After  the  cultivated,  mildly  luxurious  atmosphere  of  the 
Kemps,  she  realized  acutely  the  commonness  of  her  home.  .  .  . 

Her  father  was  waiting  for  her  in  the  train-shed,  and  she 
hugged  him  affectionately  and  went  off  on  the  little  man's 
arm,  quite  gayly,  waving  a  last  farewell  to  Eleanor  Kemp  as 
the  latter  stepped  into  her  waiting  carriage. 

"Well,  daughter,  had  a  good  time?" 


IX 

ACHIEVEMENTS 

"BuT,  papa,"  Milly  interrupted  her  chatter  about  her  mar- 
vellous doings  in  the  East,  long  enough  to  ask,  —  "where 
are  you  going?" 

Instead  of  taking  the  familiar  street-car  that  would  plunge 
them  into  a  noisome  tunnel  and  then  rumble  on  for  uncounted 
miles  through  the  drab  West  Side,  Horatio  had  turned  towards 
the  river,  and  they  were  in  the  wholesale  district,  where  from 
the  grimy  stores  came  fragrant  odors  of  comestibles,  mingled 
in  one  strong  fusion  of  raw  food  product.  Horatio  smiled 
at  the  question  and  hurried  at  a  faster  pace,  while  Milly, 
raising  her  skirts,  had  to  scuttle  over  the  "skids"  that  lay 
across  the  sidewalk  like  traps  for  the  unwary. 

"Fve  an  errand  down  here,"  he  said  slyly.  "Guess  it 
won't  hurt  you  to  take  a  little  walk." 

His  air  was  provocative,  and  Milly  followed  him  breath- 
lessly, her  blue  eyes  wide  with  wonder.  He  stopped  opposite 
a  low  brick  building  at  the  end  of  Market  Street,  and  pointed 
dramatically  across.  At  first  Milly  saw  nothing  to  demand 
attention,  then  her  quick  eyes  detected  the  blazon  of  a  new 
gilt  sign  above  the  second-story  windows,  which  read :  — 

H.  RIDGE  &  CO.,  IMPORTERS 
TEAS  AND  COFFEES 

Horatio  broke  into  an  excited  grin,  as  Milly  grasped  his 
arm. 

59 


60  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"Oh,  papa  —  is  it  you? " 

11  It's  me  all  right!"  And  he  flung  out  a  leg  with  a 
strut  of  proprietorship.  "Opened  last  week.  Want  to  see 
the  inside?" 

"And  Hoppers'?"  Milly  inquired  as  they  crossed  the 
muddy  street,  dodging  the  procession  of  drays. 

"Hoppers'  —  I  just  chucked  it,"  Horatio  swaggered. 
"Guess  I'm  old  enough  to  work  for  myself  if  I'm  ever  going 
to  —  no  money  in  working  for  the  other  feller." 

When  they  had  climbed  the  narrow,  dark  stairway  to  the 
second  floor,  Horatio  flung  open  the  door  to  the  low,  unpar- 
titioned  room  that  ran  clear  to  the  rear  of  the  building.  A 
man  rose  from  behind  the  solitary  desk  near  the  front  window. 

"Let  me  introduce  you  to  the  Company,"  Horatio  an- 
nounced with  gravity.  "Mr.  Snowden,  my  daughter!" 

They  laughed,  and  Milly  detected  an  air  of  embarrassment 
as  the  man  came  forward.  In  the  clear  light  of  the  window 
his  hair  and  mustache  seemed  blacker  than  she  remembered ; 
she  suspected  that  they  had  been  dyed.  As  Milly  shook 
hands  with  the  "Company,"  she  had  her  first  moment  of 
doubt  about  the  enterprise. 

"My  daughter,  Miss  Simpson,"  and  Milly  was  shaking 
hands  with  a  quiet,  homely  little  woman  in  spectacles,  who 
might  have  been  twenty-five  or  fifty,  and  who  gave  Milly 
a  keen,  suspicious,  commercial  look.  She  was  evidently 
all  that  was  left  of  the  "company," —  bookkeeper,  stenog- 
rapher, clerk. 

Beside  the  desk  there  was  a  large  round  table  with  some 
unwashed  cups  and  saucers,  a  coffee  boiler,  and  in  the  rear 
sample  cases  and  bundles,  —  presumably  the  results  of  im- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  61 

portations.  Milly  admired  everything  generously.  She  was 
bothered  by  discovering  Snowden  as  "the  company"  and 
considered  whether  she  ought  to  confide  to  her  father  what 
she  knew  of  the  man.  "He's  no  gentleman,"  she  thought. 
"But  that  would  not  be  any  reason  for  his  being  a  bad  busi- 
ness man,"  she  reflected  shrewdly.  And  in  spite  of  her 
woman's  misgivings  of  any  person  who  was  errant  "that 
way,"  she  decided  to  be  silent.  "He  may  have  regretted 
it,  —  poor  old  thing." 

Snowden  left  the  place  with  them.  Drawn  up  in  front  of 
the  building  was  a  small  delivery  wagon,  with  a  spindly 
horse  and  a  boy.  Freshly  painted  on  the  dull  black  cover  was 
the  legend:  "H.  Ridge  &  Co.  TEAS  AND  COFFEES." 

"City  deliveries,"  Horatio  explained.  Snowden  smiled 
wanly.  Somehow  the  spindly  horse  did  not  inspire  Milly 
with  confidence,  nor  the  small  boy.  But  the  outfit  might 
answer  very  well  for  "city  deliveries."  Milly  was  deter- 
mined to  see  nothing  but  a  rosy  future  for  the  venture.  She 
listened  smilingly  to  Horatio,  who  bobbed  along  by  her  side, 
talking  all  the  time. 

Evidently  things  had  been  moving  with  the  Ridges  since 
her  departure.  Milly's  insistent  ambitions  had  borne  fruit. 
She  had  roused  the  quiescent  Horatio.  Hoppers'  mail-order 
house  offered  a  secure  berth  for  a  middle-aged  man,  who  had 
rattled  half  over  the  American  continent  in  search  of  sta- 
bility. But,  he  told  himself,  the  fire  was  not  all  out  of  his 
veins  yet,  and  Milly  supplied  the  incentive  this  time  "to 
better  himself."  After  some  persuasion  he  had  fired  his 
friend  Snowden,  who  had  not  yet  been  invited  to  become  a 
partner  at  Hoppers',  and  who  agreed  to  put  ten  thousand 


62  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

dollars  into  the  new  business,  which  Horatio  was  to  manage. 
And  Grandma  Ridge  had  been  persuaded  to  invest  five  thou- 
sand dollars,  half  of  what  the  judge  had  left  her,  in  her  son's 
new  venture.  Then  a  chance  of  buying  out  the  China  Amer- 
ican Tea  Company  had  come.  Horatio,  of  course,  knew 
nothing  about  tea,  and  less  about  coffee;  his  experience 
had  been  wholly  in  drugs.  But  he  argued  optimistically 
that  tea  and  coffee  in  a  way  were  drugs,  and  if  a  man 
could  sell  one  sort  of  drugs  why  not  another?  He  saw 
himself  in  his  own  office,  signing  the  firm's  name,  —  his 
own  name ! 

" Father!"  Milly  exclaimed  that  evening,  throwing  her 
arms  boisterously  about  the  little  man,  in  the  hoydenish 
manner  so  much  deplored  by  her  grandmother,  —  "Isn't 
it  great!  Your  own  business  —  and  you'll  make  lots  of 
money,  lots  —  I'm  perfectly  sure." 

Her  ambitions  began  to  flower.  There  was  a  delicious 
sense  of  venture  to  the  whole  thing  :  it  offered  that  expansible 
horizon  so  necessary  to  the  happiness  of  youth,  though 
it  might  be  hard  to  see  just  why  Horatio  Ridge's  enter- 
ing upon  the  wholesale  tea  and  coffee  business  at  the 
mature  age  of  fifty  should  light  the  path  to  a  gorgeous 
future. 

Mrs.  Ridge  was  a  rather  wet  blanket,  to  be  sure,  but 
Grandma  was  a  timid  old  lady  who  did  not  like  travelling 
in  the  dark. 

"  I  hope  it  will  come  out  right  —  I  hope  so,"  she  repeated 
lugubriously. 

For  a  few  fleeting  moments  Milly  recalled  the  spindly  horse 
and  the  scrubby  boy  of  the  delivery  wagon,  but  for  only  a 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  63 

few  moments.    Then  her  natural  buoyancy  overcame  any 
doubts. 

"I'm  sure  father  will  make  a  great  success  of  the  busi- 
ness !"  and  she  gave  him  another  hug.  Was  he  not  doing 
this  for  her?  Horatio,  twisting  his  cigar  rapidly  between 
his  teeth,  strode  back  and  forth  in  the  little  room  and  nodded 
optimistically.  He  was  a  merchant.  .  .  . 

One  pleasant  Sunday  in  May,  father  and  daughter  took 
the  street-car  to  the  city  and  strolled  north  towards  the 
river  past  "the  store."  Horatio  glanced  proudly  at  the 
sign,  which  was  already  properly  tarnished  by  the  smoke. 
Milly  turned  to  gaze  at  a  smart  new  brougham  that  was 
climbing  the  ascent  to  the  bridge.  There  were  two  men 
on  the  box. 

"That's  the  Banners'  carriage,"  she  said  knowingly  to 
her  father,  "and  Mrs.  George  Banner." 

There  were  few  carriages  with  two  men  on  the  box  in 
the  city  those  days,  and  they  were  well  worth  a  young 
woman's  attention.  The  Banners  had  come  to  Chicago 
hardly  a  generation  before,  "as  poor  as  poverty,"  as  Milly 
knew.  Now  their  mammoth  dry  goods  establishment 
occupied  almost  a  city  block,  and  young  Mrs.  Banner  had 
two  men  on  the  box  —  all  out  of  dry  goods.  Why  should 
not  coffee  and  tea  produce  the  same  results?  Father  and 
daughter  crossed  the  bridge,  musingly,  arm  in  arm. 

From  the  grimy  fringe  of  commerce  about  the  river  they 
penetrated  the  residence  quarter  beside  the  Lake.  Milly 
made  her  father  observe  the  freshness  of  the  air  coming 
from  the  water,  and  how  clean  and  quiet  the  streets  were. 


64  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

Indeed  this  quarter  of  the  noisy  new  city  had  something 
of  the  settled  air  of  older  communities  "back  east"  that 
Horatio  remembered  happily.  Milly  led  him  easily  around 
the  corner  of  Acacia  Street  to  the  block  where  the  Nortons 
lived. 

" Aren't  they  homey  looking,  father?  And  just  right 
for  us.  ...  Now  that  one  at  the  end  of  the  block  —  it's 
empty.  .  .  .  You  can  see  the  lake  from  the  front  windows. 
Just  think,  to  be  able  to  see  something !" 

They  went  up  the  steps  of  the  vacant  house,  and  to  be 
sure  a  little  slice  of  blue  water  closed  the  vista  at  the  end 
of  the  street.  Horatio  swung  his  cane  hopefully.  The 
pleasant  day,  the  sense  of  "being  his  own  man"  exhilarated 
him :  he  dealt  lightly  with  the  future. 

"It's  a  tony  neighborhood,  all  right,"  he  agreed.  "What 
did  you  say  these  houses  rent  for?" 

"Eighty  dollars  a  month  —  that's  what  the  Nortons 
pay." 

"Eighty  a  month  —  that's  not  bad,  considering  what 
you  get !"  Horatio  observed  largely. 

It  was  a  bargain,  of  course,  as  father  and  daughter  tried 
to  convince  Mrs.  Ridge.  But  the  old  lady,  accustomed  to 
Euston,  Pa.,  rents,  thought  that  the  forty  dollars  a  month 
they  had  to  pay  for  the  West  Laurence  box  was  regal,  and 
when  it  was  a  question  of  subletting  it  at  a  sacrifice  and 
taking  another  for  twice  the  sum  she  quaked  —  visibly. 

"Don't  you  think,  Horatio,  you'd  better  wait  and  see 
how  the  new  business  goes?" 

But  the  voice  of  prudence  was  not  to  the  taste  of  the 
younger  generations. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  65 

"It'll  be  so  near  the  store,"  Milly  suggested.  "Papa 
can  come  home  for  his  lunch." 

"You've  got  to  live  up  to  your  prospects,  mother," 
Horatio  pronounced  robustly. 

The  old  lady  saw  that  she  was  beaten  and  said  no  more. 
With  compressed  lips  she  contemplated  the  future.  Father 
and  daughter  had  no  doubts :  they  both  possessed  the 
gambling  American  spirit  that  reckons  the  harvest  ere  the 
seed  is  put  in  the  ground. 

That  evening  after  Milly  had  departed  Horatio  explained 
himself  further,  — 

"You  see,  mother,  we  must  start  Milly  the  best  we  can. 
She's  made  a  lot  of  real  good  friends  for  herself,  and  she'll 
marry  one  of  these  days.  It's  our  duty  to  give  her  every 
chance." 

It  never  occurred  to  Horatio  that  a  healthy  young  woman 
of  twenty  with  no  prospect  of  inheritance  might  find  some- 
thing better  worth  doing  in  life  than  amusing  herself  while 
waiting  for  a  husband.  Such  strenuous  ideas  were  not  in 
the  air  then. 

"She'll  always  have  a  home  so  long  as  I'm  alive  and  can 
make  one  for  her,"  he  said  sentimentally.  "But  she'll 
get  one  for  herself,  you  see!" 

He  was  vastly  proud  of  "his  girl,"  —  of  her  good  looks, 
her  social  power,  her  clever  talk.  And  the  old  lady  was 
forced  to  agree  —  they  must  give  Milly  her  chance. 

So  that  autumn  the  Ridges  trekked  again  from  West 
Laurence  Avenue  to  the  snug  little  house  on  Acacia  Street, 
"just  around  the  corner  from  the  Drive."  At  last  Milly 

F 


66  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

had  won  her  point  and  translated  herself  from  the  despised 
West  Side  to  the  heart  of  the  " nicest"  neighborhood  in  the 
city.  After  the  turmoil  of  moving  she  went  to  her  bed  in 
the  third  floor  front  room,  listening  to  the  splash  of  the  lake 
on  the  breakwater,  dreaming  of  new  conquests. 
What  next  ? 


PART  TWO 
GETTING  MARRIED 


THE   GREAT   OUTSIDE 

ALL  this  time,  while  Milly  Ridge  was  busily  spinning  her 
little  cocoon  in  the  big  city,  other  and  more  serious  life  had 
been  going  on  there,  it  is  needless  to  say.  Out  of  the  hu- 
man stream  Milly  was  gathering  to  her  attractive  individ- 
ualities, and  Horatio  was  faithfully  performing  his  minor 
function  in  the  dingy  brick  establishment  of  the  Hoppers'. 
Many  hundreds  of  thousands,  men  and  women,  were  weav- 
ing similar  webs.  For  there  was  hardly  a  more  stirring 
corner  of  the  earth's  broad  platter  than  this  same  sprawl- 
ing prairie  city  at  the  end  of  the  great  lake.  All  this  time 
it  had  been  swelling,  much  to  the  gratification  of  its  boast- 
ful citizens,  —  getting  busier,  getting  richer,  getting  dirtier. 
There  had  been  many  a  civic  throb  and  groan,  —  rosy 
successes  and  dreary  failures. 

But  of  all  this  surrounding  life  Milly  was  not  faintly 
conscious.  She  could  tell  you  just  when  the  custom  of 
giving  afternoon  teas  first  reached  Chicago,  when  "two 
men  on  the  box"  became  the  rule,  when  the  first  Charity 
Ball  was  held  and  who  led  the  grand  march  and  why,  and 
when  women  wore  those  absurd  puffed  sleeves  and  when 
they  first  appeared  with  long  tails  to  their  coats.  But  of 
the  daily  doings  of  men  folk  when  they  disappeared  of  a 
morning  into  the  smoky  haze  of  the  city,  and  of  all  the 

69 


70  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

mighty  human  forces  around  her,  she  had  not  the  slightest 
conception,  as  indeed  few  of  her  sisters  had  at  that  time. 
To  all  intents  and  purposes  she  might  as  well  have  lived 
in  the  eighteenth  century  or  in  the  Colorado  desert,  as  in 
Chicago  in  the  eighties  and  early  nineties  of  this  marvellous 
nineteenth  century. 

Horatio  often  referred  to  Chicago  as  a  "real  live  town," 
and  congratulated  himself  for  being  part  of  it.  It  was  the 
one  place  in  all  the  world  to  do  business  in.  It  grew  over 
night,  so  the  papers  said  each  morning,  and  was  manifestly 
destined  to  be  the  metropolis  of  the  western  hemisphere,  etc., 
etc.  All  that  was  in  the  opulent  future,  for  which  every 
one  lived.  Even  Horatio,  who  spent  all  his  waking  hours 
among  men,  did  not  in  the  least  comprehend  what  it  might 
be  to  live  in  this  centre  of  expanding  race  energy.  Yet  he 
would  point  out  to  Milly  appreciatively  on  their  Sunday 
walks  the  acres  of  new  building  growing  mushroomlike  from 
the  sandy  soil,  with  the  miles  of  tangled  railroad  tracks, 
the  forest  of  smoking  chimneys,  and  the  ever  widening 
canopy  of  black  smoke.  It  was  all  ugly  and  dirty,  the 
girl  thought.  She  preferred  the  drive  along  the  lake  shore, 
and  the  Bowman's  new  palace  with  its  machicolated 
cornice. 

It  was  all  business,  intensely  business :  business  affected 
even  social  moments.  Later,  when  Milly  became  sophis- 
ticated enough  to  generalize,  she  complained  that  the  men 
were  " all  one  kind"  ;  they  could  "talk  of  nothing  but  busi- 
ness to  a  woman."  Even  their  physique,  heavy  and  flabby, 
showed  the  office  habit,  in  contrast  with  the  bony  and  ruddy 
Englishmen,  who  drifted  through  the  city  from  time  to 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  71 

time.  That  Chicago  was  a  huge  pool  into  which  all  races 
and  peoples  drained,  —  that  was  a  fact  of  which  Milly  was 
only  dimly  conscious.  "You  see  so  many  queer,  foreign- 
looking  people  on  the  street,"  she  might  observe.  "Polacks 
and  Dagoes !  .  .  .  Ugh  ....  Wish  they'd  stay  at 
home!"  Horatio  would  growl  in  response.  Milly  sup- 
posed they  came  from  the  "Yards,"  where  hordes  of  these 
savage-looking  foreigners  were  employed  in  the  disagreeable 
task  of  slaughtering  cattle.  Their  activity  was  only  too 
evident  certain  days  when  the  wind  veered  to  the  south- 
west and  filled  the  city  with  an  awful  stench. 

Of  what  it  all  meant,  this  huddling  together  of  strange 
peoples  from  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe,  Milly  never 
took  the  time  to  think.  She  never  had  the  least  conception 
of  what  it  was,  —  the  many  miles  of  bricks  and  mortar, 
the  tangled  railroads,  the  ceaseless  roar  of  the  great  city 
like  the  din  of  a  huge  factory.  Here  was  the  mill  and 
the  market  —  here  was  LIFE  in  its  raw  material.  When 
she  crossed  the  murky,  slimy  river,  as  she  had  occasion  to 
do  almost  daily,  after  the  removal  to  the  North  Side,  she 
thought  merely  how  dingy  and  dirty  the  place  was,  and 
what  a  pity  it  was  one  had  to  go  through  such  a  mess  to 
reach  the  best  shops  and  the  other  quarters  of  the  city 
where  "nice"  people  lived.  She  saw  neither  the  beauty 
nor  the  significance  of  those  grimy  warehouses  thrusting 
up  along  the  muddy  river  amid  the  steam  and  the  smoke 
—  caverns  that  concealed  hardware,  tools,  groceries,  lum- 
ber, —  all  the  raw  protoplasm  of  life.  An  artist  remarked 
once  to  Milly,  "It's  like  Hell  —  and  like  Paradise,  all  in 
one,  —  this  river!"  She  thought  him  rather  silly. 


72  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

One  evening,  however,  out  of  this  roaring  hive  of  men 
and  women  striving  to  feed  and  clothe  and  house  them- 
selves came  a  flash  of  vivid  lightning  in  the  murky  sky, 
—  the  bomb  of  the  anarchist.  That  was  enough  to  startle 
even  the  Milly  Ridges,  —  spitting  forth  its  vicious  message 
only  a  mile  or  two  from  where  the  very  " nicest"  people 
had  their  homes !  The  sodden  consciousness  of  the  city 
awoke  in  a  hideous  nightmare  of  fear.  The  newspapers 
were  filled  with  the  ravings  of  excited  ignorance.  Nobody 
talked  of  anything  else.  Horatio  declaimed  against  the 
ungrateful  dogs, — those  "Polack  beasts,"  —  who  weren't 
fit  to  enjoy  all  that  America  gave  them.  At  dinner  parties 
grave  and  serious  men  debated  in  low  'tones  the  awful  deed 
and  its  meaning.  Even  women  spoke  of  the  bomb  instead 
of  discussing  whether  "you  could  get  this  at  Field's"  or 
"should  try  MandeFs."  A  fearful  vision  of  Anarchy 
stalked  the  commonplace  streets  and  peered  into  com- 
fortable houses.  Milly  imagined  that  somehow  those  evil- 
looking  barbarians  had  got  loose  from  the  stockyards  and 
might  descend  at  any  moment  upon  the  defenceless  city 
in  a  howling  mob,  as  she  had  read  of  their  doing  in  her 
history  books.  For  the  first  few  days  it  was  an  excitement 
to  venture  into  the  streets  at  night,  even  with  a  strong 
male  escort.  Horatio  spoke  solemnly,  with  an  aroused 
consciousness  of  citizenship,  of  "teaching  the  mob  lessons 
and  a  wholesome  respect  for  the  law."  Then  there  were 
the  rumors  fresh  every  hour  of  plots  against  leading  men 
and  wholesale  slaughter  by  these  same  bloodthirsty  anar- 
chists, and  the  theatrical  discoveries  of  the  police  —  it  was  a 
breathless  time,  when  even  Milly  seized  upon  the  news- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  73 

paper  of  a  morning.  Then  gradually,  as  the  police  gathered 
in  the  little  band  of  scapegoats,  the  tension  relaxed :  people 
went  to  the  celebrated  Haymarket  to  gape  at  the  spot  where 
the  crime  against  society  had  taken  place.  .  .  . 

The  excitement  flamed  up  once  more  when  the  anarchists 
were  brought  to  trial.  Women  fought  for  the  chance  to 
sit  in  the  noisome  little  court-room,  to  see  the  eight  men 
caught  like  rats  in  the  nets  of  Justice.  When  life  emerges 
dramatically  in  the  court-room,  it  interests  the  Milly 
Ridges.  .  .  .  One  morning  Sally  Norton  came  flying 
into  the  Ridge  house. 

"Get  your  things  on,  Mil!"  she  rippled  breathlessly. 
"We're  going  to  the  anarchist  trial." 

"But  the  papers  say  you  can't  get  near  the  door." 

"Father's  given  me  a  card  to  the  judge  —  he  knows 
him.  Come  on  —  Vivie's  waiting  at  the  corner." 

In  such  heady  excitement  the  three  girls  raced  to  the 
criminal  court  building  and  were  smuggled  by  a  fat  bailiff 
through  the  judge's  private  chambers  into  the  crowded 
scene.  There  was  not  six  inches  of  standing  room  to 
be  had  in  the  place  except  beside  the  judge,  and 
there  the  bailiff  installed  the  young  women  in  comfort- 
able chairs,  much  to  the  envy  of  the  perspiring  throng 
beneath. 

There,  behold,  beside  the  grave  judge,  facing  the  court- 
room, above  the  counsel,  the  reporters,  the  prisoners,  sat 
Milly  Ridge  and  Sally  and  Vivie  Norton,  in  their  best 
clothes,  with  the  sweeping  plumed  hats  that  had  just  come 
into  fashion  then.  .  .  .  Milly  beamed  with  pleasure  and 
excitement,  casting  alluring  glances  from  beneath  her  great 


74  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

hat  at  the  severe  judge.  It  was  like  a  play,  and  she  had  a 
very  good  seat. 

It  was  a  play  that  went  on  day  after  day  for  weeks,  some- 
times dull  with  legal  formalities,  sometimes  tense  with 
" human"  interest.  And,  day  after  day,  the  three  girls 
occupied  their  favored  seats  beside  the  judge,  listening  to 
the  evidence  of  the  great  conspiracy  against  Society,  watch- 
ing the  prisoners  —  a  sorry  lot  of  men  generally  —  and 
staring  haughtily  down  at  the  jammed  court-room.  Their 
presence,  of  course,  was  noted  by  the  reporters  and  men- 
tioned as  at  a  social  event  "  among  our  society  leaders  in 
daily  attendance  at  the  trial."  Their  names  and  dresses 
were  duly  recorded,  along  with  pen  pictures  of  the  an- 
archists. It  quite  fluttered  Milly,  this  prominence,  —  "the 
Misses  Norton  and  Miss  Mildred  Ridge,  etc." 

The  three  girls  became  deeply  interested  in  the  prisoners 
and  picked  their  favorites  among  them.  Sally  was  for  a 
German  because  he  looked  to  be  "such  an  interesting  devil," 
and  Vivie  was  intrigued  by  the  newspaper  stories  about 
another.  Milly  was  drawn  to  the  youngest  of  all,  —  a  mere 
lad,  blue-eyed  and  earnest,  who  had  evidently  "got  into 
bad  company"  and  been  led  astray.  Vivie  sent  her  man 
flowers,  —  a  bunch  of  deep  red  roses,  —  and  the  next  day 
he  appeared  wearing  one  conspicuously  pinned  to  his  coat. 
Sally  coaxed  the  obliging  bailiff  to  smuggle  them  all  into  the 
jail  so  that  they  might  see  the  prisoners  and  talk  to  them 
through  the  bars.  But  the  great  event  was  when  Spies 
made  his  celebrated  speech  of  defiance,  breathing  scorn  and 
hatred  of  his  captors.  Sally  Norton  rose  in  her  seat  and 
threw  him  kisses  with  both  hands.  A  bailiff  came,  put  his 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  75 

hand  on  her  shoulder,  and  forced  her  to  be  quiet.  It  made 
something  of  a  scene  in  court.  The  judge  looked  annoyed. 
Then  Sally  had  a  fit  of  the  giggles  and  finally  had  to  leave 
the  room. 

But  when  the  turn  of  Milly's  hero  came  to  speak  in  his 
own  defence,  Milly  had  a  choking  sensation  in  her  throat 
and  felt  the  warm  tears  run  over  her  cheeks.  He,  too,  was 
brave.  He  talked  of  the  wrongs  of  society,  and  Milly 
realized  somehow  that  she  was  part  of  the  society  he 
was  condemning,  —  one  of  the  more  privileged  at  the 
feast  of  life,  who  made  it  impossible  for  the  many 
others  to  get  what  they  wanted.  Of  course  his  views 
were  wrong,  —  all  the  men  she  knew  said  so,  —  but  the 
pity  of  it  all  in  his  case,  so  young  and  handsome  and 
brave  he  appeared ! 

While  counsel  wrangled  and  pleaded,  while  this  little 
group  of  men  rounded  up  by  the  police  to  stand  sponsors 
for  Anarchy  and  expiate  its  horrid  creed,  so  that  good 
citizens  might  sleep  peacefully  nights,  faced  death,  the  three 
girls  sat  and  stared  at  the  spectacle.  It  passed  slowly,  and 
the  prisoners  were  condemned  by  a  jury  of  their  peers  quite 
promptly,  and  the  grave  judge  sentenced  them  "to  hang 
by  their  necks  until  dead."  At  the  dreadful  words  Milly 
gasped,  then  sobbed  outright. 

No  matter  what  they  had  done,  at  least  what  he  had 
done,  how  wrong  his  ideas  about  society  were,  he  was  too 
young  and  too  handsome  for  such  an  awful  fate.  If  he  had 
only  had  about  him  from  the  beginning  the  right  influences, 
if  some  woman  had  loved  him  and  guided  him  aright,  — 
Milly  hoped  that  he  might  yet  be  spared,  pardoned  if  pos- 


76  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

sible.  Mopping  the  tears  from  her  eyes  she  left  the  court- 
room for  the  last  time,  with  a  vague  sense  of  the  wretched- 
ness of  life  —  sometimes. 

That  very  night,  however,  she  was  as  gay  and  bright 
as  ever  at  the  Kemps'  dinner.  A  fascinating  young  lawyer 
was  of  the  party,  a  newcomer  to  the  city,  who  dared  to 
raise  his  voice  in  that  citadel  of  respectability,  the  Kemps' 
Gothic  dining-room,  and  declare  that  the  whole  affair  was  a 
miserable  travesty  of  justice, —  a  conspiracy  framed  up  by 
the  police.  "They  have  the  city  scared,"  he  said,  "and 
nobody  dares  say  what  he  thinks.  The  newspapers  know 
the  truth,  but  the  big  men  make  the  papers  keep  quiet." 
It  was  all  quite  thrilling,  Milly  thought.  Perhaps,  after 
all,  her  young  man  was  not  a  villain.  The  table  of 
sober  diners  sat  very  still,  but  afterwards  the  banker 
pronounced  what  the  young  lawyer  said  to  be  "loose 
talk"  and  "wicked  nonsense."  And  Milly  knew  one 
young  man  who  would  never  be  asked  again  to  the  Granger 
Avenue  house. 

After  the  verdict  came  all  sorts  of  legal  delays,  and  Milly 
largely  lost  interest  in  the  anarchists.  The  drama  had 
evaporated,  and  though  she  continued  to  read  what  the 
papers  printed  about  the  prisoners,  more  personal  affairs 
crowded  in  to  blot  out  from  her  mind  that  sense  of  a 
large,  suffering  humanity  which  she  had  had  for  a  few 
moments.  When  the  governor  was  finally  induced  to 
intervene  and  commute  some  of  the  sentences,  she  had  a 
muddled  notion  that  he  had  deprived  Society  of  its  just 
vengeance,  that  the  well-to-do,  well-meaning  people  had 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  77 

failed  to  get  full  punishment  for  the  shocking  deeds  of 
the  anarchists. 

And  that  was  all. 

About  a  year  later  the  young  blue-eyed  anarchist,  in 
whom  Milly  had  been  interested,  blew  off  the  top  of  his 
head  with  a  bomb.  But  Milly  was  very  busy  just  at  that 
time  with  other  matters. 


II 

MILLY  ENTERTAINS 

OF  much  more  importance  to  Milly  than  the  fatal  bomb 
was  her  first  real  party.  She  had  long  desired  to  entertain. 

What  magic  the  word  has  for  women  of  Milly's  disposition ! 
It  conjures  the  scene  of  their  real  triumphs,  for  woman 
displays  herself  when  she  " entertains"  as  man  does  when 
he  fights.  She  patronizes  her  friends,  worsts  her  enemies, 
—  then,  when  she  "  entertains."  .  .  . 

Milly's  party  came  off  that  first  spring  after  the  Ridges 
had  moved  into  the  Acacia  Street  house,  —  in  1890  to  be 
exact.  Milly  had  had  it  in  mind,  of  course,  even  before 
the  family  moved.  She  had  long  been  conscious  of  her  social 
indebtedness,  which  of  late  years  had  accumulated  rapidly. 
Her  party  should  be  also  an  announcement,  as  well  as  a 
review  of  progress.  She  had  consulted  with  the  Nortons 
and  Eleanor  Kemp,  who  advised  giving  a  "tea,"  —  a  cheap 
form  of  wholesale  entertainment  then  in  more  repute 
than  now.  Milly  would  have  preferred  to  "  entertain  at 
dinner,"  as  the  papers  put  it.  But  that  was  obviously 
out  of  the  question.  The  Ridge  household  with  its  shabby 
appointments  and  one  colored  maid  was  not  yet  on  a 
dinner-giving  basis.  Moreover,  it  would  have  cost  far  too 
much  to  feed  suitably  the  host  that  Milly  aspired  to  gather 
together.  The  moving  and  necessary  replenishment  of 

78 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  79 

the  household  goods  had  quite  exhausted  Horatio's  purse, 
and  the  increase  in  the  monthly  bills  more  than  consumed 
all  the  present  profits  of  the  tea  and  coffee  business. 
Grandma  Ridge  was  more  vinegary  than  ever  these  days 
over  the  household  bills.  Milly  called  her  "mean,"  and 
meanness  in  her  eyes  was  the  most  detestable  of  human 
vices. 

The  famous  "tea"  marked  another  advance  in  Milly 's 
career.  It  proved  beyond  question  her  gift  for  the  life 
she  had  elected.  Simple  as  this  affair  was  —  "from  four 
until  seven"  — it  had  to  be  created  out  of  whole  cloth  and 
involved  a  marvellous  display  of  energy  and  tact  on  Milly's 
part.  First  her  father  and  grandmother  had  to  be  accus- 
tomed to  the  idea.  "I  ain't  much  on  Sassiety  myself," 
Horatio  protested,  when  the  subject  was  first  broached. 
(He  had  an  exasperating  habit  of  becoming  needlessly  un- 
grammatical  when  he  wished  to  "take  Milly  down.")  Mrs. 
Ridge  observed  coldly,  —  "It  would  be  a  great  extravagance." 

That  tiresome  word,  "Extravagance!"  Milly  came  to 
loathe  it  most  of  all  the  words  in  the  language. 

"Oh,  grandma  !"  she  exclaimed.     "Just  tea  and  cakes  !" 

Her  conception  grew  before  the  event.  Just  "tea  and 
cakes"  developed  into  ices  and  sherbets  and  bonbons. 
Horatio  would  not  permit  punch  or  any  form  of  alcoholic 
refreshment.  After  a  convivial  youth  he  had  become  rigidly 
temperance.  "Tea  and  coffee's  enough,"  he  said.  "You 
might  tell  your  friends  where  they  come  from  —  help  on 
the  business."  (It  was  one  of  Horatio's  rude  jokes.) 

Eleanor  Kemp,  from  her  conservatories  at  Como,  supplied 
the  flowers  and  plants  that  did  much  to  disguise  the  shabbi- 


80  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

ness  of  the  little  house.  The  Norton  girls  collected  the 
silver  and  china  from  a  radius  of  eight  blocks.  There  was 
a  man  at  the  door  with  white  gloves,  another  at  the  curb 
for  carriage  company,  and  a  strip  of  dusty  red  carpet  across 
the  walk.  Milly  financed  all  this  extra  expense,  and  that 
and  her  new  gown  made  such  a  deep  hole  in  her  budget 
that  she  never  again  caught  up  with  her  bills,  although 
Horatio  was  induced  to  increase  her  allowance  the  next 
Christmas. 

Milly  and  all  her  friends  worked  for  weeks  in  prepara- 
tion. They  wrote  the  cards,  addressed  the  envelopes, 
arranged  the  furniture,  and  distributed  the  flowers.  She 
felt  "dead"  the  day  before  with  fatigue  and  anxiety,  and 
shed  tears  over  one  of  Grandma  Ridge's  little  speeches. 

But  it  was  a  triumph  !  Guests  began  coming  shortly 
after  four,  —  a  few  women  from  the  West  side,  —  and  by 
five-thirty  the  little  Acacia  Street  house  was  jammed  to 
the  bursting  point,  so  that  the  young  men  who  arrived 
towards  six  had  to  exercise  their  athletic  skill  in  order  to 
insert  themselves  into  the  crush.  Afternoon  teas  still  had 
some  allurement,  even  for  young  men,  in  those  primitive 
days,  and  Milly  had  an  army  of  loyal  friends,  who  would 
have  come  to  anything  out  of  devotion  to  her.  And  the 
affair  had  got  abroad,  as  all  Milly's  affairs  did,  had  become 
the  talk  of  the  quarter;  a  good  many  families  were  in- 
terested through  personal  contributions  of  tableware. 
There  was  a  line  of  waiting  cabs  and  carriages  for  three 
blocks  in  from  the  Lake.  The  stream  of  smartly  dressed 
people  flowed  in  and  out  of  the  house  until  after  eight, 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  81 

when  the  last  boisterous  young  men  were  literally  shooed 
out  of  the  front  door  by  Milly  and  her  aides,  —  the  two 
Norton  girls.  It  was,  as  the  French  put  it,  furiously  success- 
ful. 

Through  the  heat  of  the  fray  Mrs.  Kemp  and  Mrs.  Gil- 
bert stood  beside  Milly  under  the  grille  that  divided  the 
hall  from  the  drawing-room.  Grandma  Ridge  in  her  best 
black  gown,  with  her  stereotyped  cat-smile,  sat  near  by  in 
a  corner.  Milly  had  carefully  planted  the  old  lady  where 
she  would  be  conspicuous  and  harmless  and  had  impressed 
upon  her  the  danger  of  moving  from  her  eminent  position. 
For  once  the  little  old  lady  was  stirred  to  genuine  emotion 
as  the  babble  of  tongues  surged  over  her.  A  becoming 
pink  in  her  white  cheeks  betrayed  the  excitement  within 
her  withered  breast  over  the  girl's  triumph.  For  even 
Grandma  Ridge  possessed  traces  of  a  feminine  nature.  .  .  . 
And  Horatio  !  He  came  in  late  from  his  business,  scorning 
to  pay  attention  to  the  "  women's  doings,"  sneaked  up  the 
back  stairs  and  donned  his  Sunday  broadcloth  coat,  then 
wormed  his  way  cautiously  into  the  press  to  see  the  fun. 
One  of  the  more  exquisite  moments  of  the  day,  preserved 
by  Sally  Norton  and  widely  circulated  among  Milly's  friends, 
was  the  picture  of  the  little  man  facing  the  majestic  Mrs. 
Bernhard  Bowman  —  she  of  the  palace  on  the  shore  —  and 
teetering  nervously  on  his  heels,  with  hands  thrust  non- 
chalantly into  his  trousers'  pockets,  bragging  to  that  dis- 
tinguished person  of  "Daughter." 

"She's  a  wonder  —  mighty  smart  girl,"  he  said  confid- 
ingly. "Done  all  this  herself  you  know  —  her  own  idee. 
I'm  not  much  myself  for  entertaining  and  all  that  society 
G 


82  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

business.  Give  me  a  friend  or  two  and  a  quiet  game  of 
cards,  etc.,  etc." 

The  majestic  " leader  of  our  most  exclusive  circle, "  as 
the  Star  had  it  the  next  Sunday  morning,  eyed  the  nervous 
little  man  over  her  broad  bosom  and  across  her  plate  of 
salad  and  pronounced  gravely  her  judgment,  — 

"Your  daughter,  Mr.  Ridge,  must  have  a  remarkable 
social  talent." 

"They  all  say  it  —  must  be  so.  Guess  she  got  it 
from  her  mother's  folks  —  not  from  me."  He  laughed 
confidentially.  "Well,  I  tell  her  grandmother  we  must 
give  her  some  rope  —  she'll  marry  one  of  these  days." 

"Of  course." 

"Young  folks  will  be  young." 

(Afterwards  Horatio  puffed  considerably  when  he  told  of 
his  encounter  with  the  great  Mrs.  Bowman.  "I  wasn't 
the  least  might  'fraid  of  her,  —  talked  to  her  like  anybody 
else.  Who  was  she,  anyway,  when  old  Joe  Bowman  married 
her?  Saleslady  in  a  State  Street  store.  I've  seen  her 
myself  sliding  the  change  across  the  counter  and  handing 
out  socks."  In  this  the  little  man  must  have  exaggerated, 
for  it  was  long  before  the  Ridge  advent  in  Chicago  that  the 
lady  destined  to  become  its  social  leader  had  withdrawn 
from  the  retail  trade,  if  indeed  there  were  any  truth  in 
the  tale.  "And  she  married  a  butcher,"  Horatio  added. 
"Oh,  papa!"  from  Milly.  "Yes,  he  was  a  butcher,  too 
• — wholesale,  maybe,  but  he  had  the  West  Side  Market 
out  beyond  Division  Street  —  I've  seen  the  sign."  That 
might  well  have  been.  But  long  before  this  the  honorable 
Joseph  Bernhard  Bowman  had  died,  —  God  rest  his  soul 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  83 

in  the  granite  mausoleum  in  Oakwoods,  —  and  left  a  pleas- 
ant number  of  millions  to  finance  his  widow's  aspirations. 
In  Chicago,  in  those  days,  one  never  laid  the  start  up 
against  any  assured  achievement.) 

At  any  rate  Mrs.  Bowman's  presence  at  Milly's  party 
was  the  last  touch  of  success.  Milly,  though  she  had  met 
the  great  lady,  had  not  dared  to  send  her  a  card.  But 
Mrs.  Gilbert,  who  realized  what  it  would  mean  to  Milly, 
had  fetched  her  in  her  carriage,  coaxingly,  —  "It  will  please 
the  girl  so,  you  know,  to  have  you  there  for  a  few  minutes  !" 
And  when  the  leader  towered  above  Milly,  whose  flushed 
face  was  upturned  with  glistening,  childlike  eyes,  and  said 
in  her  ear,  "My  dear,  it's  all  delightful,  your  party,  and  you 
are  charming,  really  charming!"  Milly  felt  that  she  had 
received  the  red  ribbon. 

"She  has  a  very  magnetic  personality,  your  young  friend," 
the  great  lady  confided  afterwards  to  Mrs.  Gilbert,  and  re- 
peated impressively  several  times,  "A  magnetic  person- 
ality —  it's  all  in  that." 

The  phrase  had  not  become  meaningless  then,  and  it 
aptly  described  Milly's  peculiar  power.  Somehow  she 
reached  out  unconsciously  in  every  direction  and  drew  to 
her  all  these  perspiring,  pushing,  eating,  talking  people.  She 
had  drawn  them  all  into  her  shabby  little  home.  "Mag- 
netic," as  the  great  lady  said.  It  is  a  power  much  desired 
in  democratic  societies  where  all  must  be  done  by  the  indi- 
vidual of  his  own  initiative  —  a  power  independent  of  birth, 
education,  money,  —  with  a  touch  of  the  mystery  of  genius 
in  it,  of  course. 

Milly  drew  all  kinds,  indiscriminately,  —  even  men,  who 


84  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

didn't  count  for  much  in  this  woman's  game  of  entertain- 
ing, except  for  the  fact  that  they  came.  Yes,  Mrs.  Bern- 
hard  Bowman,  who  knew  that  people  came  to  her  chilly  halls 
merely  to  have  it  known  that  they  could  come,  might  well 
envy  poor  little  Milly  Ridge  her  one  magnet  gift. 

"And  so  sweet,"  Mrs.  Gilbert  cooed  fondly,  watching  her 
protege*. 

At  the  moment  Milly  was  listening  to  an  elderly  lady  of 
the  species  frump,  with  two  homely  daughters  of  the  species 
bore,  —  obviously  West  Side  relics,  —  and  she  gave  them 
the  same  whole-hearted  interest  she  had  given  the  majestic 
one  herself.  The  two  older,  experienced  women  gazed  at 
the  scene  half  enviously.  This  was  another  magic  quality 
that  the  girl  possessed,  —  especially  feminine,  a  tricksy  gift 
of  the  Gods,  quite  outside  the  moral  categories  and  there- 
fore desired  by  all  —  charm.  Charm  made  all  that  mob  so 
happy  to  be  there  in  the  stuffy  quarters,  struggling  to  appease 
their  thirst  with  the  dregs  of  tepid  sherbet;  charm  com- 
pelled the  warm,  enthusiastic  speeches  to  the  girl.  As  Eleanor 
Kemp  whispered,  pinching  Milly 's  plump  arm,  "My  dear, 
you  are  a  wonder,  just  a  perfect  wonder,  —  I  always  said 
so.  ...  I'll  run  in  to-morrow  to  talk  it  over."  .  .  . 

All  the  women,  richer,  better  placed  in  the  game  than 
Milly,  easily  detecting  the  shabbiness  of  her  home  beneath 
the  attempts  to  furbish  up,  envied  the  girl  these  two  gifts. 
Why  ?  Because  they  most  help  a  woman  to  be  what  civili- 
zation has  forced  her  to  be  —  a  successful  adventuress. 

"Milly  is  such  a  sweet  creature,"  Mrs.  Gilbert  purred 
to  her  companion,  as  she  sank  back  into  the  silky  softness 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  85 

of  the  brougham  that  Roy  Gilbert  had  provided  for  her. 
"I  do  hope  she'll  marry  well  !" 

"  Of  course  she  must  marry  properly,  —  some  man  who 
will  give  her  the  opportunity  of  exercising  her  remarkable 
social  gift,"  Mrs.  Bowman  pronounced  sagely. 

Nettie  Gilbert  smiled.  She  felt  that  she  had  done  a 
kind  act  that  day. 

"The  girl  has  a  career  before  her,  if  she  makes  no  mis- 
takes," the  great  lady  added. 

And  that  was  the  universal  verdict  of  all  the  experienced 
women  who  came  to  bid  their  young  hostess  farewell  and 
make  their  pretty  speeches.  One  and  all  they  recognized 
a  woman's  triumph.  In  this  first  attempt  she  had  shown 
what  she  could  do  "with  nothing,  positively  nothing  —  that 
house ! "  Hers  was  a  talent  like  any  other,  not  to  be 
denied.  The  woman's  talent.  Obviously  Horatio  could 
not  finance  this  career  on  coffee  and  tea.  Some  stronger 
man,  better  equipped  in  fortune,  must  be  found  and  pressed 
into  service.  Who  of  all  the  young  and  middle-aged  men 
that  had  come  that  afternoon  to  take  the  girl's  hand  and 
say  the  proper  things  would  undertake  this  responsibility? 
From  the  way  they  hung  about  Milly,  it  might  be  seen  that 
she  would  not  have  to  wait  long  for  her  "working  partner." 

"Next,  Milly's  engagement!"  Vivie  Norton  suggested 
daringly. 

"And  then  !"  Sally  shouted,  waving  her.  arms  in  abandon 
at  the  vision  she  conjured. 

"Did  you  ever  see  so  many  men?  .  .  .  And  they  never 
go  to  afternoon  things  if  they  can  help  it."  .  .  . 

Yes,  it  was  an  indubitable  triumph  !     Even  Horatio  and 


86  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Grandma  Ridge  admitted  it,  as  they  sat  down  in  the  dis- 
order of  the  cluttered  dining-room  with  the  drooping  flowers 
to  munch  sandwiches  and  drink  cold  chocolate  for  supper. 
They  were  plainly  excited  and  somewhat  awed  by  the  vistas 
of  the  new  social  horizon  that  was  opening  through  Milly's 
little  party. 

Milly  was  roused  the  next  morning  from  a  deep  sleep  to 
answer  a  knock  at  her  door. 

"What  is  it?"  she  said  peevishly.  "I  think  you  might 
let  me  sleep  to-day." 

"Your  father  thought  you  would  want  to  see  the  papers," 
her  grandmother  said,  holding  out  an  armful  of  Sunday 
literature.  "Shall  I  bring  you  up  a  cup  of  tea?" 

"Thanks,  Granny."  And  Milly  sank  back  into  her 
pillows,  while  her  hand  skilfully  extracted  the  sheet  that 
contained  "Madame  Alpha's"  social  column.  Ah,  here  it 
was ! 

"One  of  the  most  charming  affairs  of  the  post-lenten 
season.  ...  A  quiet  five  o'clock.  .  .  .  Many  of  our 
notable  fashionables,  etc.  .  .  .  Radiant  young  hostess, 
etc.  The  charm  of  the  young  hostess,  etc." 

Milly's  thick  braids  circled  her  soft  neck  and  fell  on  the 
large  sheet  while  she  devoured  the  words,  as  a  young  actress 
might  swallow  her  first  notices,  or  a  young  author  scan 
his  first  reviews.  The  subtle  intoxication  of  a  successful 
first  appearance  quickened  her  pulses.  "Quite  the  smart- 
est bunch  of  snobs  in  the  village,"  wrote  "Suzette"  in  the 
Mirror,  with  a  too  obvious  sneer.  (Suzette's  pose  was  a 
breezy  disdain  for  the  "highlights"  of  Society,  an  affecta- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  87 

tion  of  frontier  simplicity  and  democracy.  But  Milly,  like 
every  woman,  knew  well  enough  that  there  is  always  a 
better  and  a  worse  socially,  and  the  important  thing  is  to 
belong  to  the  best  wherever  you  are,  democracy  or  no  de- 
mocracy.) 

At  last  Milly  pushed  from  her  the  mass  of  newspapers 
and  lay  with  upturned  face,  hands  crossed  beneath  her 
head,  staring  out  of  her  blue  eyes  at  the  dusty  ceiling,  dream- 
ing of  triumphs  to  be,  social  heights  to  surmount,  a  flutter 
of  engagement  cards  winging  their  way  like  a  flight  of  geese 
to  the  little  Acacia  Street  house;  dreaming  of  men  and 
women  —  and  somewhere  at  the  end  of  the  long  vista  she 
saw  a  very  gorgeous  procession,  herself  at  the  head,  with  a 
long  veil  and  an  enormous  bunch  of  white  roses  clasped  to 
her  breast,  moving  in  stately  fashion  up  the  church  aisle. 
At  the  extreme  end  of  the  vista  stood  an  erect  black  figure 
beside  a  white-robed  clergyman.  (For  Milly  now  went  to 
the  Episcopal  Church,  finding  the  service  more  satisfying.) 
The  face  of  this  erect  figure  was  blurred  in  the  dream.  It 
was  full  of  qualities,  but  lacked  defining  shape :  it  was 
"manly,"  " generous,"  "high-spirited,"  "rich,"  "success- 
ful," etc.,  etc.  But  the  nearer  she  approached  in  her  vision 
to  the  altar  amid  the  crash  of  organ  music,  the  more  in- 
definite became  the  face.  She  tried  on  the  figure  various 
faces  she  knew,  but  none  seemed  to  fit  exactly.  No  one 
possessed  all  the  qualities. 

Grandma  with  a  cup  of  lukewarm  tea  shattered  the  vision. 


Ill 

MILLY   BECOMES   ENGAGED 

"MiLLY,"  Nettie  Gilbert  said  impressively,  "I've  some- 
thing serious  to  say  to  you." 

It  was  a  Sunday  evening  before  the  fire  in  the  Gilberts' 
pleasant  drawing-room.  The  other  supper  guests  had 
taken  themselves  off,  and  Roy  Gilbert  had  disappeared  to 
his  den,  where  he  smoked  many  cigars  and  was  supposed  to 
read  serious  books  upon  history  and  political  economy. 

Milly  glanced  apprehensively  at  the  pretty,  plump  lady 
beside  her.  The  tone  in  which  the  words  had  been  pro- 
nounced reminded  her  oddly  of  that  time  so  far  away  —  so 
very  far  back  —  when  Eleanor  Kemp  had  talked  to  hei 
seriously  about  completing  her  education. 

"Yes,  dear?"  she  answered,  caressing  a  dimpled  hand  at 
her  side. 

"Milly,"  —  Mrs.  Gilbert  leaned  forward  and  frowned 
slightly.  Milly  thought,  "Nettie's  getting  fat,  like  her 
mother."  The  Gilberts  had  awfully  good  food  and  a  great 
deal  of  it,  even  if  they  did  go  in  for  missions.  "Milly,  I 
have  you  on  my  mind  a  great  deal  these  days." 

"That's  so  good  of  you,  dear." 

Milly  thought  it  must  be  religion  once  more,  and  pre- 
pared herself. 

"You  ought  to  settle  yourself.  .  .  .  All  your  friends 
think  you  should  marry,  dear." 

88 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  89 

"Why?"   Milly  demanded  with  some  asperity. 

"Why,  a  girl  in  your  position — " 

"Yes,  I  know  all  that,"  Milly  interrupted  quickly. 

She  knew  far  better  than  Nettie  Gilbert  how  necessary 
it  was  for  her  to  settle  herself  somehow.  The  bills  had 
grown  more  rather  than  less  the  last  two  years,  and  the  tea 
and  coffee  importing  business  did  not  seem  to  be  doing 
what  had  been  expected  of  it.  There  were  signs  of  an 
increasing  financial  stringency  about  Horatio.  Then  there 
were  other  signs,  more  personal,  that  were  not  pleasant  to 
recall.  That  social  career  which  had  opened  so  brilliantly 
rather  more  than  two  years  before  had  been  full  of  pleas- 
ures and  excitements.  For  nearly  a  season  Milly  Ridge 
had  been  the  most  talked  of  and  invited  girl  in  her  special 
circle.  The  next  season  she  had  still  been  "popular,"  but 
latterly  at  the  opening  of  the  new  season  there  had  been  a 
distinct  falling  off.  The  fringe  of  cards  about  her  long 
mirror,  where  she  kept  her  invitations  tucked  into  the 
margins  and  pinned  in  pendants,  had  grown  less  fresh  — 
not  to  say  stale  —  and  less  distinguished.  Mrs.  Bowman 
had  forgotten  altogether  to  invite  her  to  dinner  this  fall. 
There  were  other  stings  and  mortifications  that  need  not 
be  described.  .  .  .  Yes,  Milly  had  been  pondering  the 
matter  more  or  less  consciously  for  some  months. 

"Well,"  she  said  to  Mrs.  Gilbert,  with  a  brave  little  smile, 
"what  shall  I  do  about  it?" 

She  recognized  Nettie  Gilbert's  right  to  broach  the  subject. 
Nettie  had  been  her  best  friend,  and  thanks  to  her  own  ex- 
perience had  a  fellow-feeling  for  her  and  wished  to  see  her 
launched  upon  a  similar  successful  career  matrimonial. 


90  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"With  all  your  charm,  you  could  have  married  a  dozen 
times,"  she  said  with  gentle  reproach. 

"But  I  haven't !"  Milly  retorted  despairingly.  She  did 
not  like  to  admit  that  her  opportunities  had  not  been  as 
numerous  as  it  was  popularly  supposed  they  had  been. 
They  never  were,  as  Nettie  must  know  from  her  own  ex- 
perience. Yet  she  had  had  her  "  chances,"  and  why  hadn't 
she  pulled  it  off  before  this?  Why  had  all  the  little  flirta- 
tions with  promising  young  men  come  to  nothing  ?  Were 
they  afraid  of  her  lavish  hand  ?  Or  had  she  been  waiting 
for  something  else,  —  "the  real,  right  thing?"  She  did 
not  know. 

Her  grandmother  said  that  a  penniless  girl  had  no  right 
to  be  so  "particular"  — which  always  maddened  Milly. 

"I'm  afraid  you're  not  serious  enough,  my  dear,"  Mrs. 
Gilbert  remarked  in  gentle  reproof.  She  had  always  felt 
that  was  a  flaw  in  Milly 's  character,  —  a  lack  of  deep  in- 
terest in  the  missionary  side  of  life. 

"But  men  don't  like  serious  women,"  Milly  said  flip- 
pantly, dangling  her  slipper  on  the  end  of  her  toes. 

"I  think  the  best  ones  do,"  Mrs.  Gilbert  retorted  severely. 
"You  were  making  fun  of  Mr.  Parker  at  supper  to-night, 
and  I'm  afraid  he  understood." 

"I  know,"  Milly  admitted  penitently.  "But  he  has 
such  a  funny  voice."  She  imitated  amusingly  the  shrill 
falsetto  of  the  said  Clarence  Parker.  "And  he's  so  so-lemn 
about  everything  he  says." 

Mrs.  Gilbert  laughed  in  spite  of  her  stern  mood,  then 
controlled  herself. 

"But,  Milly,  Clarence  Parker's  very  nice.     He's  related 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  91 

to  the  best  people  where  he  comes  from,  and  he  is  doing 
remarkably  well  in  his  business,  Roy  says." 

"What  is  it?"   Milly  demanded  more  practically. 

"Stocks  and  bonds,  I  think,  —  banking,  you  know." 

"Oh,"  said  Milly,  somewhat  impressed. 

"What  is  Clarence  Parker's  business,  Roy?"  Mrs.  Gil- 
bert appealed  to  her  husband,  who  at  that  moment  hap- 
pened to  enter  the  room. 

"He  represents  several  large  estates  in  the  East  —  in- 
vests the  money,"  Gilbert  replied,  and  turning  to  Milly 
with  a  smile  asked :  — 

"Going  out  for  him,  Milly?  He's  all  right,  solid  as  a 
rock." 

"Lighthouse,"  Milly  corrected  sulkily. 

"And  he's  got  plenty  of  his  own  money  —  has  sense  about 
investments." 

"I  haven't  any  to  make!" 

"Oh,  come  —  you've  got  one."  .  .  . 

Nevertheless,  when  the  two  friends  said  their  good-bys, 
kissing  each  other  affectionately  on  the  cheek  and  saying, 
"Will  you  go  with  me  to  the  Drummonds  Tuesday?" 
and  "How  about  the  meeting  for  the  Old  Man's  Mission?" 
Milly  added,  "Your  financial  rock  asked  if  he  might  call. 
I  told  him  he  co-uld." 

Milly  squeaked  the  words  in  imitation  of  Mr.  Parker's 
thin  voice.  They  both  laughed. 

But  Milly  trotted  home  around  the  corner  to  the  little 
house  in  Acacia  Street  in  anything  but  a  gay  mood.  The 
angular,  white  face  of  Mr.  Clarence  Albert  Parker  was  far 
from  fulfilling  the  idea  she  had  visioned  to  herself  in  her 


92  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Sunday  morning  dream.  She  knew  well  enough  why  Nettie 
Gilbert  had  arranged  this  particular  Sunday  supper  with 
the  intimacy  of  only  four  guests  —  Milly  was  very  much 
awake  now  socially  —  and  she  had  taken  pains  to  examine 
the  new  young  man  with  critical  care.  He  was  little, 
scarcely  taller  than  Horatio,  and  Milly  disliked  men  whose 
heads  she  could  look  across.  But  with  a  silk  hat  it  might 
not  be  too  bad.  And  he  was  slightly  bald,  as  well  as  pale, 
—  on  the  whole  not  robust,  —  but  he  had  keen  little  gray 
eyes  that  seemed  to  watch  one  from  the  side  and  take  in  a 
great  deal.  He  was  a  precise,  neat,  colorless  man,  the  sort 
turned  out  by  a  conservative  New  England  family  that 
invests  its  savings  with  scrupulous  care  at  four  and  three- 
quarters  per  cent.  No,  he  was  not  inspiring,  this  grandson 
of  the  Plymouth  Rock,  with  the  thin  voice.  But  he  seemed 
substantial.  Mr.  Gilbert  said  so,  and  Roy  Gilbert  knew. 

There  were  other  sombre  reflections  in  Milly's  revery 
that  night.  The  sense  of  family  stringency  was  urging  her 
to  "make  good"  in  some  way.  She  was  aware  that  she 
was  slipping  back  in  the  social  sands,  might  become 
commonplace  and  neglected,  if  she  did  not  do  something 
to  revive  the  waning  interest  in  herself.  She  realized, 
as  she  had  not  definitely  realized  before,  that  outside  of 
the  social  game  her  life  held  little  or  nothing.  To  be  sure, 
she  helped  Mrs.  Gilbert  with  her  missionary  business  and 
charities :  she  read  to  a  few  old  men  once  a  week,  and  she 
carried  flowers  over  to  St.  Joseph's  Hospital.  But  she  could 
not  pretend  to  herself  that  charities  occupied  her  whole 
being.  .  .  .  No,  the  only  way  out  was  Matrimony.  A 
marriage,  suitable  and  successful,  would  start  her  career 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  93 

once  more.  With  something  like  a  desperate  resolve  Milly 
put  her  latch-key  into  the  hole,  and  let  herself  into  the 
paternal  home,  where  a  familiar  family  odor  greeted  her 
sensitive  nostrils.  With  a  grimace  of  disgust  she  swept  up- 
stairs. Decidedly  it  was  time  for  her  to  settle  herself,  as 
Nettie  phrased  it. 

This  time  Milly  arrived,  in  spite  of  homely  paw  or  luke- 
warm inclination  for  the  man.  The  young  financier  called 
at  the  Ridge  home  once,  twice,  and  there  met  Horatio  and 
Grandma  Ridge,  who  both  thought  very  highly  of  him.  "A 
man  with  such  principles,  my  dear,"  Grandma  observed. 
The  two  young  people  "attended  divine  service  together," 
showed  up  afterwards  on  the  Drive,  where  Milly  noted  with 
satisfaction  that  Mr.  Parker  plus  a  silk  hat  overtopped  her 
gaze.  She  also  noted  that  the  friends  she  met  smiled  and 
bowed  with  just  an  added  touch  of  interest.  .  .  .  They 
talked  —  chiefly  Milly  —  on  a  variety  of  colorless  topics. 
It  appeared  that  Mr.  Parker  had  positive  views  only  on 
financial  matters.  For  all  the  rest,  —  art,  literature,  re- 
ligion, and  life,  —  he  began  with  a  cautious,  —  "Well,  now, 
I  don't  know,"  and  never  got  much  farther.  However, 
Milly  wisely  reflected,  one  didn't  marry  for  the  sake  ot 
exciting  conversation. 

The  affair  progressed  quite  smoothly;  by  the  middle  of 
winter  Milly's  friends  smiled  when  they  spoke  of  "Milly's 
young  man"  and  were  ready  with  their  felicitations.  On 
the  whole  they  thought  that  Milly  had  "done  quite 
well."  .  .  ;  ; 

It  happened  naturally,  in  the  course  of  an  expedition 


94  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

which  the  two  made  to  the  scene  of  the  great  new  Exposi- 
tion. They  drove  out  in  a  smart  carriage  with  a  pair  of 
lively  horses  which  Mr.  Parker  managed  very  well,  but 
which  took  all  his  attention.  They  first  visited  the  tumul- 
tuous fair  grounds,  where  an  army  of  workmen  were  making 
desperate  efforts  to  get  the  impromptu  city  in  some  shape 
for  visitors.  They  talked  of  the  beauty  of  the  buildings, 
the  grandeur  of  the  whole  design,  the  greatness  of  Chicago. 
Then  they  drove  to  a  vast  new  hotel  in  which  Mr.  Parker 
had  taken  a  conservative  interest,  and  they  still  talked  of 
the  marvellous  growth  of  the  city,  its  Ultimate  Destiny,  — 
terms  which  had  a  lugubrious  sound  in  the  New  Englander's 
piping  voice.  As  they  turned  northwards  around  the 
great  oval  of  Washington  Park,  the  sun  was  sinking  into  a 
golden  haze  of  dust  and  smoke.  The  horses  dropped  to  a 
peaceful  walk,  and  Milly  knew  that  it  was  coming  and 
braced  herself  for  it.  It  came,  slowly. 

First,  by  way  of  preliminary  flourish,  Mr.  Parker  de- 
clared all  over  again  his  faith  in  the  future  of  the  city.  He 
had  come  to  stay,  he  repeated  with  emphasis ;  had  thrown 
in  his  fate  with  that  of  Chicago. 

"I'm  going  to  stay,"  he  trilled,  "and  grow  up  with  the 
city."  (At  this  point  Milly  almost  upset  the  boat  by 
laughing:  the  idea  of  the  little  man's  growing  up  with 
Chicago  seemed  funny.) 

Having  struck  the  personal  note,  the  young  man  spoke 
of  his  own  "prospects,"  and  outlined  the  dignified  position 
he  intended  to  occupy  in  the  forefront  of  the  elect.  This 
implied,  of  course,  an  establishment  and  a  suitable  wife. 
Milly  made  the  proper  responses  in  the  pauses.  At  last 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  95 

the  fateful  words  reached  her  ear,  "Will  you  marry  me, 
Miss  Ridge?"  As  Milly  mimicked  later  his  slow, 
solemn  utterance,  it  sounded  more  like,  "Will  you  bury 
me,  Miss  Ridge?" 

And  Milly,  with  commendable  directness,  looked  him 
straight  in  the  eye  and  said  without  a  quiver,  —  "Yes,  I 
will,  Mr.  Parker." 

Afterwards,  as  if  this  effort  had  exhausted  both,  there 
was  silence  on  the  way  back.  When  they  reached  the 
house,  he  said  impressively,  "I  will  call  to-morrow  and 
see  your  father." 

"He'll  be  delighted  to  see  you,  I'm  sure,"  Milly  rejoined 
somewhat  flatly.  Then  she  fled  up  the  steps,  as  if  she  were 
afraid  he  might  try  to  kiss  her  or  hold  her  hand.  She 
escaped  that,  for  the  present.  .  .  . 

So  it  was  done  at  last. 


IV 

CONGRATULATIONS 

IF  Milly  had  any  misgivings  or  inner  revolt  that  first 
night,  it  would  have  been  dispelled  by  the  unfeigned  joy  of 
her  father  and  her  grandmother  the  next  morning  when 
she  told  them  the  news.  Little  Horatio  said  robustly  as 
he  kissed  her :  — 

"Fine!  Daughter!  Fine!  .  .  .  He's  a  smart  young 
man,  I  know  that  — the  best  one  of  all  your  beaus.  .  .  . 
And  he's  lucky,  too,"  he  added  apologetically. 

Grandma  Ridge  remarked  with  a  certain  malice,  "You 
ought  to  be  happy  with  him,  Milly;  he  will  be  able  to  give 
you  all  the  things  you  want." 

"I  hope  so,"  Milly  responded  briskly. 

A  few  telephone  messages  to  intimate  friends  and  the 
news  was  spread  broadcast  over  the  area  of  Milly's  little 
world.  For  the  rest  of  the  day  and  for  several  days  after- 
wards she  was  kept  busy  receiving  congratulations  by  tele- 
phone and  in  person,  —  flowers,  letters,  invitations,  —  all 
the  little  demonstrations  of  interest  that  give  importance 
and  excitement  to  a  woman's  life. 

She  had  "made  good,"  at  last  —  that  was  the  pleasant 
sensation  she  was  bathed  in  from  morning  to  night.  She 
had  done  the  right  thing.  The  congratulations  sounded 
quite  sincere.  If  not  much  was  said  of  the  young  man's 

96 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  97 

personal  charms,  a  great  deal  was  made  of  his  substantial 
qualities,  which  were  indubitable. 

Nettie  Gilbert  was  one  of  the  first  to  arrive  and  took 
Milly  to  her  arms  affectionately.  "My  dear,"  she  mur- 
mured between  kisses,  "  I'm  so  glad  for  you." 

"You  see  I  did  it,"  Milly  replied  complacently,  mar- 
velling to  herself  how  easy  it  had  been  to  do,  once  she  had 
determined  upon  this  way  out. 

"You  must  let  me  give  you  a  party.  .  .  .  Thursday?" 
Mrs.  Gilbert  purred,  ignoring  delicate  analysis. 

That  was  the  beginning  of  a  joyous  whirl  of  engagements, 
—  luncheons,  dinners,  suppers,  and  theatre  parties.  It 
seemed  as  if  Milly's  little  world  had  been  waiting  for  this 
occasion  to  renew  its  enthusiasm.  Milly  had  the  happy 
self-importance  that  an  engaged  girl  should  have,  and  to 
cap  her  triumphs,  Mrs.  Bowman  gave  one  of  her  tremendous 
dinners,  with  twenty-four  covers,  her  second-best  gold 
service,  and  a  dance  afterward  hi  the  picture  gallery.  All 
in  honor  of  obscure  little  Milly  Ridge  !  She  had  arrived. 

She  might  look  down  the  long,  heavily  laden  table  with 
the  men-servants  inserting  the  courses  between  the  guests, 
and  scan  the  faces  of  prominent  citizens  and  their  wives 
together  with  a  few  minor  diplomats  —  for  this  was  the 
great  summer  of  '93  —  and  feel  a  pardonable  elation  hi  her 
position.  On  her  right  sat  that  Mr.  George  Banner,  the 
wealthy  merchant  whose  equipage  with  two  men  on  the 
box  she  had  once  admired,  and  on  her  left  was  the  kindly, 
homely  face  of  old  Christian  Becker,  the  owner  of  The  Daily 
Star.  (You  may  be  sure  that  the  Star  had  a  full  account 
of  this  function.  But  Milly's  name  appeared  so  frequently 


98  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

in  Madame  Alpha's  social  column  that  it  had  almost  lost 
interest  for  her.)  ...  At  the  other  end  of  the  table  next 
to  the  hostess's  expansive  person  sat  the  Instrument  of 
Accomplishment,  like  a  very  refined  little  white  mouse,  his 
keen  eyes  taking  in  every  gold  fork  on  the  table.  His 
mouth  was  often  open,  and  Milly  imagined  she  could  hear 
the  familiar,  "Well  now,  I  don't  know  about  that." 
However,  his  hostess  seemed  to  treat  him  with  consideration. 

It  should  be  said  to  Milly's  credit  that  she  took  rather 
less  satisfaction  in  all  this  social  flattery  than  in  the  happi- 
ness her  engagement  brought  into  the  little  Acacia  Street 
house.  Horatio  began  to  chirp  once  more,  after  the  inter- 
view with  his  prospective  son-in-law.  The  inspissated 
gloom  of  the  days  of  stringency  had  passed.  The  golden 
beams  of  prosperity  seemed  to  radiate  from  the  white-faced 
financier. 

"I  tell  you  Clarence  is  a  smart  one,"  Horatio  announced 
after  the  first  interview.  "He  gave  me  some  good  pointers." 
For  after  the  embarrassing  formalities  of  sentiment  had  been 
disposed  of,  the  two  men  had  naturally  dropped  into  busi- 
ness, and  Parker  had  suggested  a  method  of  inserting  the 
tea  and  coffee  business  into  the  Exposition  by  getting  con- 
cessions for  "Coffee  Kiosks,"  which  should  advertise  the 
Ridge  brands  of  harmless  stimulants.  The  scheme  had 
fired  Horatio,  who  began  once  more  to  dream  dreams  of 
wealth. 

So  when  the  ring  came,  which  like  everything  else  about 
Clarence  Albert  was  plain,  costly,  correct  —  and  unlovely  — 
Milly  put  the  large  diamond  on  her  stubby  finger  and  re- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  99 

fleeted  that  even  if  its  giver  was  not  the  Idol  of  her  Dreams, 
he  was  very  good  to  her,  and  she  ought  to  be  happy.  She 
meant  to  make  him  a  good  wife  as  she  understood  that 
vague  term,  and  thus  repay  him  for  all  his  bounties.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  little  Parker  man  was  getting  repaid  al- 
ready in  social  matters  for  his  generous  act  in  selecting  a 
poor  girl  to  share  his  affluence.  The  world  knew  him  to 
be  sharp,  and  was  glad  to  think  him  kind.  .  .  . 

"It's  a  very  handsome  one,  Clarence,"  Milly  said  of  the 
ring,  turning  it  critically  to  the  light.  And  she  sweetly 
held  up  her  face  to  be  kissed. 

That,  to  be  frank,  was  the  part  she  liked  least  of  the 
whole  affair,  "  demonstrations,"  and  she  dealt  out  her 
favors  to  her  lover  sparingly.  However,  her  fiance*  was  not 
demonstrative  by  nature :  if  he  had  amorous  passions,  he 
kept  them  carefully  concealed,  so  that  Milly  could  manage 
that  side  quite  easily.  It  usually  came  merely  to  a  pres- 
sure of  hands,  a  cold  kiss  on  the  brow,  or  a  flutter  along 
the  bronze  tendrils  about  the  neck.  Sometimes  Milly 
speculated  what  it  might  be  like  later  in  the  obscure  inti- 
macy of  marriage,  but  she  dismissed  the  subject  easily, 
confident  that  she  could  "manage"  as  she  did  now.  And 
she  had  the  sweet  sense  of  self-sacrifice  in  doing  something 
personally  disagreeable.  "If  it  hadn't  been  for  poor  old 
Dad,"  she  would  say  to  herself  and  sigh.  Which  was  not 
wholly  sincere.  At  this  period  of  their  lives  few  mortals 
can  be  square  with  themselves. 

All  such  refinements  of  thought  and  feeling  were  rare 
because  there  was  no  time  for  revery.  Milly  was  deter- 
mined to  get  the  most  out  of  her  triumph,  and  drove  the 


100  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

peaceable  Clarence  Albert  rather  hard.  All  women,  he  had 
supposed  in  his  ignorance,  were  more  or  less  fragile.  But 
it  was  astonishing  what  an  amount  of  nerve-racking 
gayety  Milly  could  get  through  in  a  day  and  come  up  smil- 
ing the  next  morning  for  another  sixteen-hour  bout  with 
pleasure.  Sometimes  Clarence  protested  that  he  was  a 
working  man  and  must  be  at  his  office  by  nine.  But  Milly 
had  slight  mercy;  she  let  him  see  plainly  the  social  duty  of 
the  American  husband.  He  too  reflected,  it  might  be, 
that  things  would  be  different  after  the  wedding  and  yawned 
away  the  hours  as  best  he  could  at  dance  or  dinner  or  late 
supper  in  Old  Vienna  on  the  famous  Midway. 

It  was  Chicago's  wonderful  festal  year,  the  summer  of 
the  great  Fair.  Responsible  men  of  large  affairs,  who  knew 
what  was  going  on  financially  behind  the  scenes,  might  look 
grave  and  whisper  their  apprehensions  among  themselves. 
But  the  people  were  resolved  to  be  gay.  They  were  mad 
with  doing,  especially  the  women.  All  the  world  was  enter- 
tained in  the  lavish  western  spirit  of  hospitality.  Thus  in 
addition  to  her  own  private  excitement,  Milly  shared  the 
general  festival  spirit,  and  thanks  to  her  social  charm  and 
her  young  man's  reputation  for  solid  achievement  the  two 
were  part  of  many  an  important  festivity.  They  helped 
to  entertain  the  European  notables,  dined  and  did  the 
shows  from  morning  until  morning  in  the  best  of  company. 
Milly  wished  it  might  go  on  like  this  forever. 

"Chicago  will  not  be  large  enough  for  you  after  this  ex- 
perience," her  old  friend,  Eleanor  Kemp,  observed,  crossing 
her  path  at  the  ball  for  the  French  ambassador.  "  You  will 
have  to  move  on  to  New  York." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  101 

"Well,  now,  I  don't  know  about  that,"  Parker  demurred, 
but  Milly  cut  in  with,  — 

"  We're  going  abroad  first,  you  know." 

She  smiled  graciously  on  her  old  friend,  divining  exactly 
that  kind  lady's  mixed  feelings.  "Come  on,  Clarence!" 
and  she  sailed  off  into  the  press,  bowing  and  smiling  to  her 
right  and  her  left. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  feverish  activity  there  was  little 
time  for  mutual  examination  and  discovery  for  the  engaged 
couple,  —  all  the  better,  Milly  thought,  —  and  yet  she 
had  already  resolved  upon  certain  changes  in  her  husband- 
to-be,  like  a  competent  wife.  For  one  thing  she  discovered 
quite  early  that  Clarence  Albert  was  inclined  to  be  close 
in  money  matters.  He  always  counted  his  change  care- 
fully, like  a  good  puritan,  and  gave  small  tips.  He  ordered 
the  less  expensive  dishes  and  wines,  and  inquired  whether 
a  single  portion  might  do  for  two  when  they  were  lunching 
out  together.  He  did  not  like  to  take  cabs  when  the  street- 
cars were  running.  Milly  had  suffered  all  her  life  at  the 
hands  of  Grandma  Ridge  from  such  petty  economies,  and 
she  did  not  intend  that  it  should  continue.  It  was  not  so 
much  any  intentional  meanness  —  if  Milly  had  but  known  — 
as  the  resultant  habit  of  generations  of  enforced  thrift. 
Milly's  fingers  all  turned  outwards,  and  money  ran  through 
them  like  sand.  She  was  a  born  Spender  and  scattered 
Cash,  her  own  or  other  people's,  with  regal  indifference. 
All  her  life  she  had  suffered  from  cramped  means,  and  now 
that  she  was  about  to  marry  a  rich  man  she  meant  to  get 
the  good  of  it.  What  am  I  doing  it  for?  she  would  ask 
herself  in  her  more  cynical  moments.  ...  As  soon  as  she 


102  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

was  Mrs.  Parker  she  would  come  to  an  understanding  with 
her  husband  on  this  cardinal  point  and  show  him  what 
was  decent  for  a  man  in  his  position.  Meanwhile  she  gave 
him  a  few  hints  of  what  he  might  expect. 

"I'm  afraid,"  he  remarked  in  his  falsetto  voice,  not 
unkindly,  "you  like  to  spend  money." 

"Of  course  I  do!  What  woman  doesn't?"  Milly  re- 
torted brightly,  as  she  chucked  the  bunch  of  violets  she  had 
been  wearing  out  of  the  cab  window  because  they  were 
somewhat  wilted,  and  she  added  warningly,  "I  hate 
mean  people !" 

He  laughed  good  naturedly. 

Their  first  misunderstanding  came  over  the  question 
where  they  were  to  live  after  their  return  from  the  Euro- 
pean trip.  It  seems  that  Parker  had  already  bought  land 
far  out  on  the  north  shore  of  the  Lake  in  a  new  and  promis- 
ing neighborhood  and  proposed  building  a  house  there. 
Milly  was  ready  enough  to  build :  she  had  large  plans  for 
her  new  home.  But  she  had  set  her  mind  on  a  lot  on  the 
Drive,  a  block  from  the  Bowman  place  and  two  from  the 
Gilberts  —  "the  most  desirable  site  in  the  city,  every  one 
says,"  she  explained,  "and  so  near  all  our  friends." 

Parker  tried  to  make  her  understand  that  fifty  thousand 
dollars  was  altogether  too  much  money  to  put  into  an  "un- 
productive investment"  like  that. 

"You've  got  the  money?"  Milly  demanded  succinctly. 

He  admitted  it  reluctantly. 

"Then  I  can't  see  why  we  shouldn't  have  the  best." 

Milly,  who  had  secret  plans  of  running  the  great  Bowman 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  103 

a  social  race,  was  thoroughly  irritated  at  his  obstinacy. 
They  turned  from  the  vacant  lot,  which  they  had  been 
examining  for  the  second  time,  and  walked  down  the  Drive 
at  odds. 

"My  property  at  Lakehurst  has  twice  the  frontage  and 
only  cost  me  ten  thousand,"  the  little  man  of  means  ob- 
served complacently. 

"I  don't  care  if  it  cost  only  ten  dollars,"  Milly  pouted. 
"It's  in  the  suburbs." 

"The  city's  growing  that  way  fast." 

"It'll  reach  us  when  I'm  an  old  woman !" 

"Before  that  I  guess."  .  .  . 

She  dashed  upstairs  to  her  room,  leaving  her  lover  to  the 
attentions  of  Mrs.  Ridge.  The  old  lady  approved  of  Clar- 
ence Albert.  They  discussed  religion  together.  They  had 
the  same  Victorian  standards  and  principles  about  life. 
This  afternoon  he  confided  to  her  the  real  estate  trouble 
Milly  and  he  had  had. 

"I'm  sure,  Clarence,  you  are  quite  right,  and  Milly  must 
learn  to  be  more  reasonable.  The  air  will  be  so  much 
cleaner  out  there." 

"And  the  cars  come  within  a  block  now." 

"I'll  speak  to  Milly  about  it." 

She  did. 

"If  you  aren't  careful,  Milly,"  she  warned  her  grand- 
daughter, "you'll  frighten  him.  You  aren't  married  yet," 
she  added  meaningly. 

"He  oughtn't  to  buy  land  without  consulting  me,"  Milly 
flared,  forgetting  that  this  transaction  had  taken  place 
before  her  determination  to  become  Mrs.  Clarence  Parker. 


104  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"I  think  you  are  a  very  ungrateful  girl,"  Mrs.  Ridge 
observed,  with  pressed  lips. 

"  Oh,  you  always  take  the  men's  side,  grandma !  .  .  . 
Clarence  isn't  the  only  man  in  the  world." 

"  Better  take  care  before  it's  too  late,"  the  old  lady  re- 
peated warningly.  "You  don't  treat  Clarence  as  a  girl 
should  who  is  going  to  marry.  He's  an  admirable  young 
man." 

Mrs.  Ridge  ever  croaked  thus,  foretelling  disaster. 

"If  you  say  anything  more,  I'll  never  marry  him!" 
Milly  flamed  in  final  exasperation.  "You  don't  understand. 
Women  don't  behave  as  they  did  when  you  were  a  girl. 
They  don't  lie  down  before  their  husbands  and  let  them 
walk  all  over  them." 

"Perhaps  not,"  grandma  laughed  icily  in  reply.  "But 
I  guess  men  aren't  so  different  from  what  they  were  in  my 
time." 

Grandma  had  her  own  understanding  of  male  character. 


THE    CRASH 

As  events  soon  proved,  Mrs.  Ridge's  croaking  was  not 
without  justification.  The  crash  in  Milly 's  affairs  came, 
not  until  the  autumn,  a  few  weeks  before  the  day  set  for 
the  wedding,  and  it  came  on  the  line  of  cleavage  already 
described,  although  quite  unexpectedly  and  over  a  trivial 
matter,  as  such  things  usually  happen. 

After  the  closing  of  the  fairy  city  gloom  had  settled  down 
over  Chicago.  People  were  exhausted  socially  from  their 
hectic  summer  and  Panic  stalked  forth  from  behind  the 
festival  trappings  where  it  had  lain  hidden.  Times  were 
frightfully  bad,  every  one  said,  —  never  so  bad  before  in 
the  experience  of  the  country.  There  were  strikes,  a  hun- 
dred thousand  idle  men  walking  the  cold  streets,  empty 
rows  of  buildings,  shops  and  factories  closed  —  and  a  hard 
winter  coming  on.  All  this  did  not  mean  much  to  Milly, 
busy  with  her  own  concerns  and  plans  for  the  wedding, 
except  for  the  fact  that  few  people  entertained  and  every- 
body seemed  relaxed  and  depressed.  Clarence  Albert,  like 
a  prudent  mariner  of  the  puritan  type,  dwelt  upon  the 
signs  of  dire  storm,  and  counselled  their  not  building 
for  the  present,  although  he  let  her  understand  that 
his  own  ventures  were  well  under  cover.  Milly  was 
less  disappointed  over  not  building  the  house  because 

105 


106  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

she  still  had  her  mind  on  that  vacant  lot  on  the  Drive. 
Perhaps  in  the  depression  Clarence  would  be  able  to  get 
it  at  a  bargain.  .  .  . 

Then  the  quarrel  came  over  nothing  at  all.  They  were 
to  go  to  the  theatre  or  opera  —  later  she  forgot  which  — 
by  themselves  one  evening.  Her  fiance*  came  to  dinner, 
and  he  and  Horatio  talked  dolefully  of  the  business  outlook. 
When  they  started  out,  there  was  no  cab  before  the  door. 
Milly,  regarding  her  light  raiment,  demurred  and  telephoned 
for  one  herself.  When  they  reached  the  theatre  and  she 
proceeded  to  sail  down  the  centre  aisle,  she  found  that  their 
seats  were  in  the  balcony.  Clarence,  who  never  dealt  with 
ticket  brokers  on  principle,  had  not  been  able  to  get  good 
floor  seats  and  thought  the  first  row  of  the  balcony  would 
answer,  as  the  theatre  was  a  small  one.  Where  he  had  been 
brought  up,  the  balcony  seats  were  considered  "just  as 
good,"  and  better  if  they  could  be  had  more  cheaply.  He 
did  not  understand  the  awfulness  of  metropolitan  standards 
to  which  Chicago  was  aspiring. 

Milly,  a  cloud  upon  her  pretty  face,  drew  her  wrap  close 
about  her  and  sat  dumb  through  the  first  act.  Her  morti- 
fication was  increased  by  discovering  Sally  Norton  in  a 
box  below  with  Ted  Leffingwell  and  some  gay  folk.  Sally's 
roaming  eyes  also  discovered  Milly  and  her  young  man 
before  the  act  was  finished;  she  signalled  markedly  and 
communicated  the  news  to  her  party,  who  all  looked  at 
the  glum  pair,  laughed  and  smiled  among  themselves. 

Milly 's  burning  ears  could  hear  Sally's  jeers.  At  the 
close  of  the  act  she  got  up  and  marched  out  without  a  word, 
followed  by  the  bewildered  Clarence. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  107 

"What's  the  matter  Milly?    Where  are  you  going?" 

"Home." 

At  the  entrance  there  were  no  cabs  in  sight  at  this  hour, 
and  they  walked  to  the  end  of  the  block  where  the  cars 
passed.  When  a  car  came,  Milly  got  as  far  as  the  platform, 
pronounced  it  a  "filthy  box,"  which  it  probably  was,  and 
made  the  conductor  let  her  off.  Then  she  marched  haughtily 
northwards,  trailed  by  Clarence  Albert,  in  whose  white 
face  a  dangerous  pink  was  rising.  Fortunately  it  was  a 
still  clear,  night,  and  they  covered  the  mile  to  Acacia  Street 
without  misadventure  and  without  words.  When  they  had 
reached  the  small  front  room  and  Milly  had  thrown  off  her 
wrap,  her  eyes  still  flashing  angrily,  Parker  said  hi  a  care- 
fully controlled  voice :  — 

"I'm  sorry,  Milly,  to  have  given  you  so  much  annoyance." 

"As  if  a  girl  with  a  decent  gown  on  could  ride  in  a  street- 
car!" 

"I'm  sorry — " 

"If  you  can't  afford—" 

"I  didn't  know  you  were  so  dependent  on  carriages — " 

It  was  a  pardonable  human  revenge,  but  it  was  the  straw. 
In  a  flash  Milly  stripped  the  big  diamond  from  her  finger 
and  dramatically  held  it  forth  to  him. 

"Here's  your  ring,"  she  said. 

"Milly!"  .  .  . 

It  isn't  wise  to  follow  such  a  scene  any  further.  I  do  not 
know  that  Milly  finally  flung  the  ring  at  her  lover,  though 
she  was  capable  of  doing  it  like  an  angry  child.  At  any 
rate  the  symbolic  circle  of  harmonious  union  lay  on  the 
floor  between  them  when  Grandma  Ridge  arrived,  stealthily 


108  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

coming  from  behind  the  portieres,  her  little  gray  shawl 
hugged  tight  about  her  narrow  shoulders. 

"Why,  Milly  —  what  is  this  ?     Clarence  !" 

"It  means  that  I'm  not  going  to  marry  a  man  who  cares 
more  for  his  money  than  for  me,"  Milly  said  bluntly,  pick- 
ing up  her  wraps  and  stalking  out  of  the  room.  She  paused 
in  the  hall,  however,  long  enough  to  hear  her  former  lover 
say  dolefully,  — 

"She  don't  love  me,  Mrs.  Ridge.  That's  the  trouble  — 
Milly  don't  really  love  me." 

And  she  added  from  the  hall :  — 

"Clarence  is  quite  right,  grandma.  I  don't  love  him — 
and  what's  more,  I'm  never  going  to  marry  a  man  I  can't 
love  for  all  the  money  in  the  world  !" 

With  this  defiant  proclamation  of  principle  Milly  ascended 
to  her  room. 

What  passed  between  Mrs.  Ridge  and  the  discarded 
Clarence,  it  is  needless  to  relate.  Even  Mrs.  Ridge  be- 
came convinced  after  a  time  that  the  rupture  was  both  in- 
evitable and  irrevocable.  Parker  at  last  left  the  house,  and 
it  must  be  added  took  with  him  the  ring  which  had  been  re- 
covered from  the  floor. 

After  he  had  gone  Mrs.  Ridge  knocked  at  Milly's  door. 
But  an  obstinate  silence  prevailed,  and  so  she  went  away. 
Milly  was  sitting  on  her  bed,  tears  dropping  from  her  eyes, 
tears  of  rage  and  mortification  and  disappointment.  She 
realized  that  she  had  failed,  after  all,  in  doing  what  she  had 
set  out  to  do,  and  angry  as  she  still  was,  disgusted  with 
Clarence's  thin  and  parsimonious  nature,  she  was  begin- 
ning, nevertheless,  to  be  conscious  of  her  own  folly. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  109 

"I  never  liked  him,"  she  said  to  herself  over  and  over,  in 
justification  for  her  rash  act.  "I  couldn't  bear  him  near 
me.  I  only  did  it  for  Dad's  sake.  And  I  could  not,  that's 
all  there  is  to  it  —  I  just  couldn't.  .  .  .  We  should  have 
fought  all  the  time  —  cold,  mean  little  thing." 

After  a  time  she  undressed  and  went  to  bed,  calmer  and 
more  at  peace  with  herself  than  for  some  time.  The  inevi- 
table does  that  for  us.  "I  can't  live  with  a  man  I  don't 
love  —  it  isn't  right,"  she  thought,  and  gradually  a  glow 
of  self-appreciation  for  her  courage  in  refusing,  even  at  the 
ninth  hour,  to  make  the  woman's  terrible  sacrifice  of  her 
sacred  self  came  to  her  rescue.  Her  sentimental  education, 
with  its  woman's  creed  of  the  omnipotence  of  love,  had  reas- 
serted itself. 

"I  tried,"  she  said  in  her  heart,  "but  I  couldn't  —  it 
wasn't  the  real,  right  thing." 

Of  course  she  had  known  this  all  along,  but  she  treated 
it  now  as  a  new  discovery.  And  she  went  to  sleep,  sooner 
than  one  might  expect  under  the  circumstances. 


VI 

THE   DEPTHS 

BUT  the  next  day,  as  the  French  say,  it  was  to  pay.  When 
Milly  kissed  her  father  at  the  breakfast  table,  his  mournful 
eyes  and  drooping  mouth  showed  plainly  that  he  knew  the 
disaster. 

"I  couldn't,  father,"  she  murmured  weepily. 

"It's  all  right,  daughter,"  the  little  man  responded  bravely, 
fumbling  with  his  fork  and  knife. 

But  her  grandmother  did  not  mince  matters.  It  was  all 
well  enough  for  a  girl  to  have  her  own  way  as  Milly  had  had 
hers,  but  now  she  had  made  a  nice  mess  of  things,  —  put 
them  all  in  a  ridiculous  position.  Who  was  she  to  be  so  par- 
ticular, to  consider  herself  such  a  queen  ?  etc.,  etc.  Milly 
took  it  all  in  silence.  She  knew  that  she  deserved  it  in  part. 

At  last  Horatio  intervened.  He  didn't  want  his  daughter 
to  feel  forced  to  marry  a  man  she  couldn't  be  happy  with, 
not  for  all  Banner's  millions.  Business  was  bad,  to  be  sure, 
but  he  was  a  man  yet  and  could  find  something  to  do  to  sup- 
port his  daughter. 

"I  hope  it  ends  all  this  society  business  for  good,"  Mrs. 
Ridge  put  hi  with  a  hard  little  laugh.  "If  you  don't  want 
to  marry,  you  can  go  to  work." 

"I  will,"  said  Milly,  humbly. 

"Don't  be  hard  on  her,  mother,"  Horatio  whispered  into 
the  old  lady's  ear.  "It  don't  do  no  good  now." 

110 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  111 

But  after  he  had  left,  Mrs.  Ridge  turned  on  Milly  again. 
"I  don't  suppose  you  know  the  trouble  your  father  is  in." 
" We're  always  hard  up.  .  .  .     Anything  new?" 
She  had  been  so  fully  preoccupied  with  her  own  affairs 
these  past  months  she  had  not  realized  that  the  tea  and 
coffee  business  was  getting  into  worse  straits  than  ever. 
Everything,    she    had    optimistically   reckoned,    would    be 
smoothed  out  by  her  marriage. 

"Bankruptcy  —  that's  what's  coming,"  her  grandmother 
informed  her,  with  an  acid  satisfaction  in  being  able  to  re- 
cord the  fulfilment  of  her  prophecies.  "That  comes  of  your 
father's  trying  a  new  business  at  his  age  —  and  Hoppers' 
was  so  sure.  He'd  have  been  a  department  head  by  now,  if 
he  had  stayed." 

"I  thought  the  fair  concession  made  a  lot  of  money." 
Mrs.  Ridge  gave  her  the  facts.  It  seemed  that  Horatio, 
always  optimistic  and  trusting,  had  put  this  new  venture 
in  the  hands  of  a  man  who  had  talked  well,  but  had  cheated 
him  outrageously,  and  finally  absconded  after  the  close  of 
the  Fair,  leaving  behind  debts  contracted  in  the  firm's  name. 
The  losses  had  wiped  out  all  the  profits  of  the  concession  and 
more,  and  this,  added  to  the  general  business  depression,  was 
bad  enough.  But  there  was  worse.  Snowden  had  suddenly 
demanded  his  money.  Using  the  defalcation  as  an  excuse 
he  alleged  Horatio's  bad  management,  and  wanted  an  im- 
mediate settlement  of  the  firm's  affairs.  That  meant  the 
end  —  bankruptcy,  as  Mrs.  Ridge  said.  Awful  word  ! 
"But  it's  outrageous  of  Mr.  Snowden  !"  Milly  cried. 
"It  seems  he's  that  kind.  He  got  ahead  of  your  father 
in  the  partnership  agreement,  and  now  the  lawyer  says  he 


112  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

can  do  anything  he  likes  —  sell  out  the  business  if  he  wants 
to.  ...  And  we've  got  this  house  on  our  hands  for  another 
year,"  she  added  sourly,  bringing  home  to  Milly  her  share 
in  the  general  misfortune. 

Then  the  little  old  lady  gathered  up  the  breakfast  dishes, 
while  Milly  sat  and  looked  at  the  dreary  wall  of  the  next 
house.  It  was  pretty  bad.  Still  she  could  not  feel  sorry 
for  what  she  had  done.  .  .  . 

"I'll  see  Mr.  Snowden  myself,"  she  announced  at  last. 

Her  grandmother  looked  at  her  curiously. 

"What  good  will  that  do?" 

Milly,  recollecting  the  old  offence,  blushed.  Latterly  as 
the  prospective  wife  of  a  rich  man  she  had  assumed  certain 
airs  of  her  putative  social  position,  and  thought  she  could 
"manage"  easily  a  common  sort  of  person  like  this  Snowden 
man.  Now  she  realized  with  a  sudden  sinking  of  spirits 
it  was  all  different.  She  possessed  no  longer  any  authority 
other  than  that  of  an  attractive,  but  poor,  young  woman 
with  "a  good  manner." 

During  the  next  few  days  she  was  destined  to  feel  this 
change  in  her  position  repeatedly.  If  the  news  of  her  engage- 
ment to  an  "eligible"  man  had  spread  rapidly,  the  announce- 
ment of  the  disaster  to  her  engagement  seemed  miraculously 
immediate.  She  had  just  begun  with  her  grandmother's 
help  to  prepare  to  return  her  engagement  gifts,  as  her  grand- 
mother insisted  was  the  proper  thing  to  do,  when  in  rushed 
the  Norton  girls,  quite  breathless.  Sally  greeted  her  with  a 
jovial  laugh. 

"So  you've  dropped  him  !  I  told  Ted,  Milly  would  never 
stand  for  those  balcony  seats !"  She  rippled  with  laughter 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE       f-  113 

at  the  humor  of  the  situation.  Milly,  revived  by  her  atti- 
tude, related  the  cab  and  car  incidents.  "  He  was  —  horrid." 

"  They  're  all  like  that,  those  New  Englanders  —  afraid 
to  spend  their  money,"  Sally  commented  lightly. 

Vivie  took  the  sentimental  view. 

"Your  heart  was  never  in  it,  dear,"  she  said  consolingly. 

"Of  course  it  wasn't  —  I  never  pretended  it  was  !" 

"That  sort  of  thing  can't  last." 

Milly,  now  quite  reassured,  gave  a  drole  imitation  of  Clar- 
ence Albert's  last  remarks,  —  "She  doesn't  love  me,  Mrs. 
Ridge  —  Milly  doesn't  really  love  me  !" 

She  trilled  the  words  mischievously.  Sally  roared  with 
pleasure.  Vivie  said,  "Of  course  you  couldn't  marry  him 
—  not  that!" 

And  Milly  felt  that  she  was  right.  No,  she  could  not  do 
that :  she  had  been  true  to  herself,  true  to  her  feelings,  — 
woman's  first  duty,  —  a  little  late,  to  be  sure. 

But  a  full  realization  of  her  situation  did  not  come  until 
she  appeared  in  public.  Then  she  began  to  understand 
what  she  had  done  in  discarding  her  suitable  fiance".  Nettie 
Gilbert  hardly  invited  her  to  sit  when  she  called.  She  said 
severely :  — 

"Yes,  Clarence  told  me  all  about  it.  He  feels  very  badly. 
It  was  very  frivolous  of  you,  Milly.  I  should  not  have 
thought  it  possible." 

She  treated  Milly  as  the  one  soul  saved  who,  after  being 
redeemed,  had  fled  the  flock.  Milly  protested  meekly, 
"But  I  didn't  care  for  him,  Nettie,  not  the  least  little  bit." 

Mrs.  Gilbert,  who  remembered  her  Roy,  replied  severely, 


114  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"At  least  you  ought  to  have  known  your  own  mind  before 
this." 

"He  is  mean,"  Milly  flared. 

"And  you  are  rather  extravagant,  I'm  afraid,  my  dear  !" 

That  relation  ended  there,  at  least  its  pleasant  intimacy. 
And  so  it  went  from  house  to  house,  especially  among  the 
settled  married  folk,  who  regarded  Milly  as  inconceivably 
foolish  and  silly.  Who  was  she  to  be  so  scrupulous  about 
her  precious  heart  ?  Even  the  younger,  unmarried  sort  had  a 
knowing  and  disapproving  look  on  their  faces  when  she  met 
them.  As  for  the  stream  of  invitations,  there  was  a  sudden 
drought,  as  of  a  parched  desert,  and  the  muteness  of  the 
telephone  after  its  months  of  perpetual  twinkle  was  simply 
ghastly. 

So  Milly  was  learning  that  there  is  one  worse  experience 
in  life  than  not  "making  good,"  and  that  is,  giving  the  appear- 
ance of  it  and  then  collapsing.  This  was  the  collapse. 
Sympathy  was  all  with  Clarence  Albert,  except  among  a  few 
frivolous  or  sentimental  souls,  like  Sally  and  Vivie.  Young 
women  having  the  means,  who  found  themselves  in  Milly's 
situation,  —  with  a  broken  engagement  on  their  hands  at  the 
beginning  of  the  season,  —  would  at  once  have  gone  abroad  or 
to  California  or  the  South,  to  distract  themselves,  rest  their 
wounded  hearts,  and  allow  the  world  to  forget  their  affairs, 
as  it  promptly  would.  At  least  they  would  have  tried  set- 
tlement work.  But  Milly  had  no  money  for  such  gentle 
treatment.  She  had  to  run  the  risk  of  bruising  her  sensi- 
bilities whenever  she  set  foot  out  of  doors,  and  she  was  too 
healthy-minded  to  sit  long  at  home  and  mope.  And  home 
was  not  a  pleasant  place  these  days. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  115 

Still,  she  said  to  herself  defiantly,  she  was  not  sorry  for 
what  she  had  done.  A  woman's  first  duty  was  to  her  heart, 
etc. 

Eleanor  Kemp,  who  had  been  ill  and  away  from  the  city, 
sent  for  Milly  on  her  return.  She  proved  to  be  the  most 
sympathetic  of  all  her  friends,  and  Milly  decided  that  Eleanor 
was  her  best,  as  she  was  her  oldest,  friend.  At  the  conclusion 
of  Milly's  tale,  rendered  partly  in  the  comic  vein,  Mrs.  Kemp 
sighed,  "It's  too  bad,  Milly."  The  sigh  implied  that 
Milly  had  damaged  herself  for  the  provincial  marriage 
market,  perhaps  irretrievably.  She  might  marry,  of  course, 
probably  would,  being  sobered  by  this  fiasco,  but  after 
such  a  failure,  nothing  " brilliant"  might  be  expected. 

"I  just  couldn't  sit  opposite  that  cold,  fishy  creature  all 
my  life,"  Milly  protested.  "He  got  on  my  nerves  —  that 
was  it." 

"Yes,  I  understand  —  but  — " 

Milly  suspected  that  banking  and  bankers  might  get  on  a 
woman's  nerves,  too,  though  Walter  Kemp  was  a  much  more 
human  man  than  Clarence  Albert  ever  would  be. 

"And  now  what  will  you  do  ? "  her  friend  inquired.  (Milly 
had  confided  to  her  Horatio's  coming  disaster.) 

"I  don't  know  —  something  quick  !" 

"You  might  help  me  with  my  mail  and  buying  —  I  never 
seem  to  get  through  with  everything  —  and  this  New  Hos- 
pital committee." 

"Could  I,  do  you  think?"  Milly  responded  eagerly. 

So  it  was  arranged  that  Milly  should  become  a  sort  of 
informal  lady  secretary  and  assistant  to  the  banker's  wife, 


116  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

with  unstated  hours,  duties,  and  compensation,  —  one  of 
those  flexible,  vague  business  and  social  arrangements  that 
women  were  more  likely  to  make  with  one  another  twenty 
years  ago  than  now. 

Milly's  spirits  revived  quickly,  and  she  left  the  Kemps 
buoyant.  It  seemed  easier  than  she  had  expected  to  "get 
something  to  do."  She  kissed  Eleanor  Kemp  with  genuine 
gratitude. 

"You've  always  been  the  kindest,  dearest  thing  to  me, 
Nelly." 

"I'm  very  fond  of  you,  dear,  and  always  shall  be." 

"I  know  —  and  you  were  my  first  real  friend." 

Milly  had  a  pleasant  sense  of  returning  to  old  ideals  and 
ties  in  thus  drawing  near  once  more  to  the  Kemps,  whom 
latterly  she  had  found  a  trifle  dull.  .  .  .  Leaving  the  house, 
she  bumped  into  old  Mrs.  Jonas  Haggenash,  one  of  the 
Kemps'  neighbors.  The  Haggenashes  had  made  their  way 
in  lumber  and  were  among  the  most  considered  of  the  older, 
unfashionable  people  in  the  city.  Mrs.  H.  had  a  reputation 
as  a  wit,  of  the  kind  that  "has  her  say"  under  any  and  all 
circumstances.  Latterly  she  had  rather  taken  up  Milly 
Ridge,  who  fished  in  many  pools. 

"So  you  and  your  young  man  had  a  falling  out,  Milly," 
Mrs.  Haggenash  rasped  nasally. 

"Our  engagement  has  been  broken,"  Milly  acknowledged 
with  dignity. 

"That's  a  pity.  It  ain't  every  day  a  poor  girl  can  marry  a 
millionnaire.  They  don't  grow  on  every  bush." 

"When  I  marry,  it  will  be  some  one  I  can  respect  and  love 
too." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  117 

The  old  lady  smiled  dubiously  at  the  pretty  sentiment. 

"Most  women  want  to.  But  they've  got  to  be  fed  and 
clothed  first." 

She  looked  at  Milly's  smart  walking  costume  and  smiled 
again.  Milly  always  managed  to  have  a  becoming  street 
dress  and  hat,  even  in  her  poorest  days,  and  lately  she  had 
let  herself  out,  as  the  pile  of  unopened  bills  on  her  dressing- 
table  would  show. 

"I  expect  to  eat  and  dress,"  Milly  retorted,  and  trotted  off 
with  a  curse  near  her  lips  for  Mrs.  Jonas  Haggenash  and  all 
her  tribe. 

The  way  home  took  Milly  near  the  office  of  the  tea  and 
coffee  business,  and  she  thought  to  surprise  her  father  and 
give  him  the  good  news  of  Mrs.  Kemp's  offer.  She  would 
also  get  him  to  walk  home  with  her.  Horatio  had  been  very 
doleful  of  late  and  she  wished  to  cheer  him  up.  She  had  not 
visited  the  office  for  many  months,  but  its  outward  appear- 
ance was  much  the  same  as  it  had  been  that  first  time  when 
she  had  visited  it  with  her  father.  The  sign  had  become 
dingy,  was  almost  undecipherable,  as  if  it  had  anticipated 
the  end  of  its  usefulness.  The  same  dreary  little  cart  for 
"city  deliveries"  stood  before  the  door,  but  the  thin  horse 
drooped  disconsolately  between  the  shafts,  as  if  he  too  knew 
that  he  was  not  there  for  long. 

Horatio  was  not  in  the  office.  Snowden  stood  beside  the 
bookkeeper,  looking  over  a  ledger.  As  Milly  opened  the 
door  both  he  and  the  bookkeeper  looked  up.  Milly  recog- 
nized the  hatchet-faced  woman  of  uncertain  age,  with  the 
forbidding  stare  through  her  large  spectacles.  This  time 


118  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

when  Milly  came  forward  with  a  pleasant  smile  and  "Miss 
Simpson,  how  are  you?"  the  stony  face  did  not  relax  a 
muscle.  Miss  Simpson  looked  her  employer's  daughter 
over  as  if  she  were  about  to  accuse  her  of  being  the  cause  for 
the  firm's  disaster.  "Mr.  Snowden,"  Milly  continued,  ig- 
noring the  woman's  hostility,  "I  came  for  my  father.  .  .  . 
How  are  you  and  Mrs.  Snowden?" 

"Your  father's  gone,"  the  bookkeeper  snapped  with  an 
unpleasant  smile.  She  eyed  Milly 's  fashionable  attire  un- 
sympathetically.  It  was  the  second  time  that  afternoon  that 
Milly  was  made  to  feel  apologetic  for  her  good  clothes. 

"Oh,"  she  said  hesitantly. 

"Anything  I  can  do  for  you,  Miss  Ridge  ?"  Snowden  asked, 
glancing  down  at  the  ledger  indifferently. 

Milly  had  an  inspiration. 

"Why,  yes,  Mr.  Snowden,"  she  exclaimed  pleasantly.  "I 
should  like  to  talk  with  you  a  few  moments,  if  I  am  not  in- 
terrupting your  work,"  she  added,  for  Snowden  made  no 
move. 

"Well?  "he  said  gruffly. 

Milly  turned  towards  the  rear  of  the  loft  where  there  were 
a  number  of  little  tables  dotted  with  unwashed  china  cups, 
and  grains  of  tea  and  coffee.  Snowden  followed  her  slowly, 
and  leaned  against  a  table. 

"What  is  it?" 

"Mr.  Snowden,"  Milly  began  gently,  "you  are  my  father's 
oldest  friend  in  the  city." 

"Guess  I  know  that." 

"He's  very  unhappy." 

"  Has  good  reason  to  be." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  119 

She  made  the  direct  appeal. 

"Why  do  you  do  this  thing,  Mr.  Snowden?  Why  do 
you  want  to  ruin  my  father  —  your  old  friend  ?  " 

"Guess  you  don't  understand  —  he's  pretty  nearly  ruined 
me/"  Snowden  emitted  with  a  snort. 

"Yes,  I  understand,"  Milly  replied  glibly.  "Business  had 
been  very  bad.  My  friends  tell  me  all  business  has  been 
dreadful  since  the  Fair  —  everybody  feels  poor.  But  why 
make  things  worse  ?  A  little  time,  and  it  will  be  different." 

She  smiled  at  him  persuasively. 

"I  want  to  save  my  own  skin,  what  there  is  left  to  save," 
he  grumbled.  "Your  father's  made  a  pretty  bad  mess  of 
things,  Milly." 

"We  won't  discuss  what  my  father  has  done,"  Milly  re- 
torted with  dignity.  "He's  been  deceived —  he's  too  trust- 
ing with  men.  He  trusted  you  !" 

At  this  thrust  Snowden  laughed  loudly. 

"And  you  want  me  to  trust  him  with  my  money  some 
more  ?  No,  thank  you." 

His  tone  changed  insensibly.  No  one  could  be  rough 
with  Milly  for  long.  Snowden  volunteered  some  explana- 
tions of  the  tea  and  coffee  business  not  related  by  Mrs.  Ridge. 
It  seemed  that  Horatio  had  made  rather  a  mess  of  things  all 
around. 

"So  you  see  I  must  try  and  save  what  I  can  before  it's  all 
gone.  .  .  .  I've  got  a  family  of  my  own,  you  know." 

Milly  knew  that,  and  wished  she  had  been  nicer  to  Mrs. 
Snowden  and  the  uninteresting  daughter  when  she  had  had 
the  chance.  She  had  never  had  them  to  the  Acacia  Street 
house  in  all  these  years. 


120  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"Can't  you  wait  a  few  months?  .  .  .     Please  !".  .  . 

Entreaty  was  all  the  argument  life  had  given  Milly.  There 
was  a  leap  of  something  in  the  man's  flushed  face  that  caused 
the  girl  to  retreat  a  step  or  two.  She  had  not  meant  to 
rouse  his  graceless  passion,  but  that  was  what  she  had  almost 
succeeded  in  doing  by  her  coaxing.  As  she  drew  back  Snow- 
den  laughed. 

"You  see,  Milly,  people  pay  in  this  world  for  what  they 
want  —  men  and  women  too.  They  have  to  pay  somehow  ! " 

And,  this  enigmatic  taunt  ringing  in  her  ears,  Milly  de- 
parted with  all  the  dignity  that  remained  to  her.  She  was 
conscious  of  the  bookkeeping  woman's  hostile  sneer  upon 
her  back  as  she  disappeared.  Her  face  burned  with  the  man's 
coarse  words :  "In  this  world  people  have  to  pay  for  what 
they  want." 

That  was  too  true  !  She  had  not  been  willing  to  pay, 
except  with  smiles  and  pretty  speeches,  the  small  change,  and 
it  seemed  that  was  not  enough.  She  had  not  been  willing 
to  pay  the  price  of  a  good  position  in  her  world  which  she 
wanted,  nor  Snowden's  price  for  mercy  to  her  father.  Of 
course  not  that !  But  now  she  must  pay  somehow  for  what 
she  got :  for  her  food  and  her  clothes  and  her  shelter  first 
of  all.  It  had  come  to  that.  Thus  Milly  had  her  first  lesson 
in  the  manifold  realities  of  life. 

Soberly  but  bravely  she  faced  the  winter  wind  and  made 
her  way  home  to  her  father's  house. 


VII 


MILLY   TRIES   TO   PAY 

THE  next  months  were  in  some  respects  the  dreariest  that 
Milly  was  ever  to  know.  It  was  not  long  before  the  illusion 
about  her  work  for  Eleanor  Kemp  wore  thin.  It  was,  in  a 
word,  one  of  those  polite,  parasitic  occupations  for  women, 
provided  by  the  rich  for  helpless  friends,  and  it  was  satisfying 
to  neither  party.  A  good  deal  of  time  for  both  was  wasted 
in  "  talking  things  over,"  with  much  discursive  chatter  on 
matters  in  general,  and  all  sorts  of  consulting  back  and  forth 
about  the  job  to  be  done.  There  were  letters  to  be  carefully 
written,  then  rewritten  after  delicately  guarded  criticisms 
had  been  made ;  shopping  to  be  done  where  it  took  hours  to 
decide  whether  this  " matched"  or  not  and  whether  Banner's 
or  Dround's  was  a  better  place  for  purchasing  this  or  that. 
Milly  still  tried  to  keep  up  some  social  life,  and  so  she  usually 
came  in  at  the  Kemps  rather  late  in  the  morning,  and  after 
lunching  with  her  friend  went  back  to  the  city  on  errands. 
She  was  a  miracle  of  un-system,  and  frequently  forgot.  But 
she  was  so  genuinely  penitent  and  abased  when  her  omissions 
were  discovered  that  her  friend  had  not  the  heart  to  be 
severe.  Milly,  on  the  other  hand,  began  to  think  that  the 
work  took  a  great  deal  of  time  and  that  fifty  dollars  a  month 
was  small  pay  for  her  services,  yet  did  not  like  even  to  hint 
that  she  wanted  more. 

Walter  Kemp  summed  the  matter  up  in  the  brutal  fashion 

121 


122  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

of  man-financier,  "  Better  give  Milly  her  money  and  let 
me  send  you  a  trained  woman  from  the  bank  to  do  your 
work,  Nell." 

But  Eleanor  Kemp  was  shocked  at  this  evidence  of  male 
tactlessness. 

"  Milly  would  never  take  a  gift  like  that !" 

That  was  the  trouble :  Milly  belonged  to  the  class  too 
proud  to  take  charity  and  too  incompetent  to  earn  money. 
So  Mrs.  Kemp  continued  to  do  as  much  as  she  had  done 
before  and  to  pay  Milly  fifty  dollars  a  month  out  of  her 
private  purse. 

"Pity  she  didn't  marry  Parker,"  Kemp  said  brusquely. 
" He'll  be  a  very  rich  man  one  of  these  days." 

"You  see  she  couldn't,  Walter,"  his  wife  explained  eagerly. 
"She  didn't  love  him  enough." 

"Well,"  this  raw  male  rejoined,  "she'd  better  hurry  up 
and  find  some  one  she  does  love  who  can  support  her." 

"Yes,"  Mrs.  Kemp  admitted,  "she  ought  to  marry." 

For  in  those  days  there  didn't  seem  to  be  any  other  way 
of  providing  for  the  Milly  Ridges. 

Milly  realized  her  inadequacy,  but  naturally  did  not 
ascribe  it  wholly  to  incompetency.  She  wanted  to  give  up 
her  irregular  job  :  it  could  not  be  concealed  from  her  friends, 
and  it  marked  her  as  a  dependent.  But  the  stern  fact  re- 
mained that  she  needed  the  money,  even  the  paltry  fifty 
dollars  a  month,  as  she  had  never  needed  anything  in  life. 
If  she  refrained  from  spending  a  dollar  for  several  years,  she 
could  hardly  clear  herself  of  the  accumulated  bills  from  her 
halcyon  days  of  hope. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  123 

And  the  household  needed  money,  too.  After  that  regret- 
table interview  with  Snowden,  the  catastrophe  in  the  tea 
and  coffee  business  came  with  the  swiftness  of  long-delayed 
fate.  One  morning  Horatio  did  not  rise  from  the  breakfast 
table,  as  had  been  his  wont  for  so  many  years,  and  throwing 
out  his  chest  with  the  sensual  satisfaction  of  the  well-fed  male 
shout  boisterously :  — 

"Good-by,  folks,  I  must  be  off  to  the  office  !" 

For  there  was  no  longer  any  office  to  go  to. 

Instead,  Horatio  sat  glumly  at  the  table  reading  the  want 
columns  of  the  morning  paper,  down  and  up,  and  then  as 
the  morning  wore  on  he  silently  departed  for  the  city  — 
"to  look  for  something."  Hopeless  task,  when  the  streets 
were  filled  with  men  out  of  work,  and  businesses  everywhere 
were  closing  down  and  turning  off  old  employees.  Milly, 
watching  Horatio  reach  gropingly  for  his  hat  and  coat,  like 
a  stricken  animal,  realized  that  her  father  was  no  longer 
young  and  brave.  He  had  passed  fifty,  —  the  terrible  dead- 
line in  modern  industry.  "Nobody  wants  an  old  dog,  any 
way/'  he  said  to  his  mother  forlornly. 

Then  Milly  was  almost  sorry  for  what  she  had  done.  But 
it  was  not  really  her  fault,  she  still  thought. 

It  was  a  mournful  experience,  this,  of  having  a  grown  man 
—  the  one  male  of  the  family  —  sitting  listlessly  about  the 
house  of  a  morning  and  going  forth  aimlessly  at  irregular 
times,  only  to  return  before  he  should  be  expected.  The 
habit  of  her  life,  as  it  had  been  the  habit  of  Horatio's,  was 
to  have  the  male  sally  forth  early  from  the  domestic  hearth 
and  leave  it  free  to  the  women  of  the  family  for  the  entire 
day.  .  .  .  Usually  optimistic  to  a  fault,  with  a  profound 


124  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

conviction  that  things  must  come  right  of  themselves  some- 
how, Milly  began  to  doubt  and  see  dark  visions  of  the 
family  future.  What  if  her  father  should  be  unable  to  find 
another  place  —  any  sort  of  work  —  and  should  come  to 
hang  about  the  house  always,  getting  seedier  and  sadder,  to 
be  supported  by  her  feeble  efforts  ?  Milly  refused  to  con- 
template the  picture. 

One  day  her  grandmother  asked  money  from  Milly.  The 
old  lady  was  a  grim  little  nemesis  for  the  girl  these  days,  — 
a  living  embodiment  of  "See  what  you  have  done,"  though 
never  for  a  moment  would  Milly  admit  that  she  was  respon- 
sible for  the  accumulation  of  disaster.  It  should  be  said  in 
behalf  of  Grandma  Ridge  that  now  the  blow  of  fate  had 
fallen,  which  she  had  so  persistently  predicted  for  four  long 
years,  she  set  her  lips  in  grim  puritan  silence  and  did  that 
which  must  be  done  without  reproach. 

Somehow  she  found  the  money  for  the  rent  from  month 
to  month  and  gave  Horatio  his  carfare  and  lunch  money 
each  morning.  But  she  came  to  Milly  for  money  to  buy 
food,  and  Milly  gave  it  generously  although  she  owed  all 
she  earned  and  much  more.  But  food  came  before  bills. 
If  it  hadn't  been  for  Eleanor  Kemp's  luxurious  luncheons, 
the  girl  would  often  have  gone  hungry.  .  .  .  And  through 
it  all  she  never  took  refuge  in  tears.  "What's  the  use?" 
she  said. 

It  was  during  the  darkest  of  these  days  that  a  new  turn  in 
Milly's  fate  came  unexpectedly.  She  had  been  to  a  Sunday 
luncheon  at  the  Nortons,  and  was  walking  back  along  the 
Drive,  thinking  a  little  sadly  that  even  her  old  pals  had  in- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  125 

vited  her  only  at  the  last  moment,  "to  fill  in."  She  was  no 
more  any  sort  of  social  "card."  She  was  revolving  this  and 
other  dreary  thoughts  in  her  worried  mind  when  she  heard 
her  name,  —  "Miss  Ridge  —  I  say,  Miss  Ridge  !" 

She  turned  to  meet  the  beaming  face  of  old  Christian 
Becker,  the  editor-proprietor  of  the  Morning  Star,  who  was 
hurrying  towards  her  as  fast  as  his  short,  fat  person  would 
permit  him.  As  he  came  along  he  raised  his  shiny  silk  hat 
above  his  bald  head,  and  his  broad  face  broke  into  a  larger 
smile  than  was  its  wont.  Becker  was  an  amusing  character, 
tempting  to  set  before  the  reader,  but  as  he  has  to  do  only 
incidentally  with  Milly  Ridge  it  cannot  be.  Enough  to 
say  that  after  forty  years  of  hard  struggle  in  the  land  of  his 
adoption,  he  had  preserved  the  virtues  of  a  simple  country- 
man and  the  heart  of  a  good-natured  boy.  Every  one  in 
the  city  knew  Christian  Becker;  every  one  laughed  and 
growled  at  his  newspaper,  —  the  God  of  his  heart. 

"Thought  it  must  be  you,"  he  gasped.  "Never  forget 
how  a  pretty  woman  walks  !"  (How  does  she  walk?  Milly 
wondered.)  "How  are  you,  Miss  Ridge?  Haven't  seen 
you  for  some  time  —  not  since  that  swell  dinner  at  the 
Bowman  place,  d'ye  remember?" 

Milly  remembered  very  well,  —  the  apex  moment  of  her 
career  hitherto. 

He  smiled  good  naturedly,  and  Milly  smiled,  too.  Then 
Becker  added  in  a  childlike  burst  of  confidence  :  — 

"Let  me  tell  you,  you  did  just  right,  my  girl!  Don't 
tie  yourself  up  with  any  man  you  can't  run  with.  It  don't 
work.  It  saves  tears  and  trouble  to  quit  before  you're 
hitched  by  the  parson." 


126  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Milly  flushed  at  the  frank  reference  to  her  broken  engage- 
ment, then  laughed  at  the  crude  phrasing.  But  her  heart 
warmed  with  the  word  of  sympathy.  Gradually  she  un- 
burdened herself  of  all  her  troubles,  and  at  the  conclusion 
the  kindly  neswpaper  man  said  wisely:  — 

"Never  you  mind  how  folks  behave,  Miss  Ridge.  Keep 
a  stiff  upper  lip  —  hold  up  your  head  —  and  you'll  have  all 
of  'em  running  after  you  like  hens  after  corn  'fore  you  know 
it.  That's  what  happened  to  me  when  I  went  broke  that 
time." 

"But  I'm  not  fit  to  do  anything,"  Milly  confessed  truth- 
fully, "and  I  must  support  myself  somehow." 

"Why  don't  you  try  newspaper  work?  You  are  a  clever 
girl  and  you  know  the  world.  .  .  .  Come  to  my  office  to- 
morrow noon  —  no,  I've  got  a  Washington  nob  on  my  hands 
for  lunch  —  "  (Becker  was  vain  of  his  political  influence, 
which  consisted  for  the  most  part  of  entertaining  visiting 
politicians  at  luncheon.)  "Come  in  'bout  four,  and  we'll 
see  what  we  can  do  to  help  you  out." 

With  a  fatherly  nod  he  hurried  off  down  a  side  street,  and 
Milly  went  home  with  a  new  fillip  to  her  lively  imagination. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  proprietor  of  the  Star  was  not  en- 
tirely disinterested  in  his  kindness.  He  had  been  looking 
for  some  woman  to  take  "Madame  Alpha's"  place  and  fur- 
nish the  paper  with  that  column  of  intimate  social  tittle- 
tattle  about  people  the  readers  knew  only  by  name,  which 
every  enterprising  American  newspaper  considers  a  neces- 
sary ingredient  of  the  "news."  The  estimable  lady,  who 
signed  herself  "Madame  Alpha,"  had  grown  stale  in  the 
business,  as  such  social  chroniclers  usually  do.  The  widow 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  127 

of  an  esteemed  citizen,  with  wide  connections  in  the  older 
society  of  the  city,  she  had  done  very  well  at  first.  But 
she  had  "fallen  down"  lamentably,  to  use  Becker's  phrase, 
during  the  recent  period  of  Chicago's  social  expansion.  She 
neither  knew  the  new  gods  and  goddesses,  nor  did  she  know 
how  to  invent  stories  about  their  doings. 

Becker,  who  had  seen  Milly,  not  merely  at  the  Bowmans, 
but  at  many  of  the  more  brilliant  functions  of  the  Fair  season, 
regarded  her  as  "up-to-date,"  and  further,  thought  her  a 
nice,  lively  young  woman,  who  would  know  the  difference 
between  Mrs.  Patziki's  card  party  on  Garfield  Boulevard 
and  a  dinner  to  the  French  ambassador  at  the  Banner's. 
It  made  little  difference  whether  she  could  write  or  not,  so 
long  as  she  had  the  "entry"  as  he  called  it.  At  any  rate  he 
would  try  her. 

So  Milly  began  her  new  career  as  journalist  with  much 
enthusiasm  and  a  sense  of  self-importance  that  had  been 
grievously  lacking  in  her  enterprises  for  some  time.  She 
thought  she  had  the  ability  to  write  —  what  attractive  young 
American  woman  doesn't?  Her  friends  thought  her  clever, 
and  laughed  at  her  little  "stories"  about  people.  She  set 
herself  industriously  to  the  composition  of  elaborate  articles 
on  "Our  Social  Leaders,"  consisting  largely  of  a  retrospect 
and  review,  for  "our  social  leaders"  kept  very  still  during 
those  terrible  months  of  want  and  panic  that  followed  the  gay 
doings  of  the  great  show,  or  were  out  of  the  city.  These 
articles  appeared  in  the  Sunday  edition,  over  the  nom  de 
plume  of  the  "Debutante."  Other  women  of  the  regular  staff 
did  the  card-parties  and  club  news  and  the  West  Side  stuff. 

There  was  a  city  editor,  of  course,  and  a  ruthless  blue 


128  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

pencil,  but  as  Milly  was  recognized  on  the  paper  as  "the  old 
man's"  present  hobby,  she  was  given  a  pretty  free  rein.  She 
sailed  into  the  dingy  Star  offices  dressed  quite  smartly, 
dropped  her  sprawling  manuscript  on  the  Sunday  editor's 
table,  and  ambled  into  Mr.  Becker's  sanctum  for  a  little 
social  chat.  In  the  office  she  was  known  as  "the  Real 
Thing,"  and  liked  as  she  was  almost  everywhere,  though  the 
youthful  reporters  laughed  at  her  pompous  diction. 

The  Star  paid  her  the  handsome  sum  of  fifteen  dollars  a 
week. 


VIII 


MILLY   RENEWS   HER   PROSPECTS 

IT  did  not  take  Milly  long  to  realize  that  the  sort  of  news- 
paper writing  she  was  doing  was  as  parasitic  in  its  nature  as 
her  first  job,  and  even  less  permanent.  Of  course  it  quickly 
leaked  out  who  the  Debutante  was  who  wrote  with  such 
finality  of  "our  social  leaders/'  and  though  friends  were  kind 
and  even  helpful,  assuring  Milly  "it  made  no  difference," 
and  they  thought  it  "a  good  thing  for  her  to  do,"  she  knew 
that  in  the  end  her  work  would  kill  whatever  social  position 
she  had  retained  through  her  vicissitudes.  The  more  "ex- 
clusive" women  with  social  aspirations  liked  secretly  to  have 
their  presences  and  their  doings  publicly  chronicled,  but  they 
were  fearful  lest  they  should  seem  to  encourage  such  pub- 
licity. Although  they  said,  "We'd  rather  have  one  of  us  do 
it  if  it  has  to  be  done,  you  know,"  yet  they  preferred  to  have 
it  thought  that  the  information  came  from  the  butler  and 
the  housemaid.  Milly  soon  perceived  that  a  woman  must 
cheapen  herself  at  the  job,  and  by  cheapening  herself  lose 
her  qualification.  Nevertheless,  she  had  to  keep  at  it  for 
the  money. 

That  was  the  terrible  fact  about  earning  one's  living, 
Milly  learned :  the  jobs  —  at  least  those  she  was  fitted  for  — 
were  all  parasitic  and  involved  personal  humiliations.  From 
K  129 


130  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

this  arose  Milly's  growing  conviction  of  the  social  injustice 
in  the  world  to  women,  of  which  view  later  she  became  quite 
voluble.  .  .  . 

Fortunately  the  summer  came  on,  when  " Society"  moved 
away  from  the  city  altogether.  Becker,  who  had  been  some- 
what disappointed  in  Milly's  indifferent  success,  now  sug- 
gested that  she  do  a  series  of  articles  on  inland  summer  re- 
sorts. "Show  'em,"  said  the  newspaper  man,  "that  we've 
got  a  society  of  our  own  out  here  hi  the  middle  west,  as 
classy  as  any  in  America,  —  Newport,  Bar  Harbor,  or  Lenox." 
He  advised  Lake  Como  for  a  start,  but  Milly,  for  reasons  of 
her  own,  preferred  Mackinac,  then  a  popular  resort  on  the 
cold  water  of  Lake  Superior. 

By  mid- July  she  was  established  in  the  most  fashionable 
of  the  barny,  wooden  hotels  at  the  resort  and  prepared 
to  put  herself  in  touch  with  the  summer  society.  One  of 
the  first  persons  she  met  was  a  Mrs.  Thornton  from  St.  Louis, 
a  pleasant,  ladylike  young  married  woman,  who  had  a  cottage 
near  by  and  took  her  meals  at  the  hotel.  She  was  a  summer 
widow  with  three  children,  —  a  thoroughly  well-bred  woman 
of  the  sort  Milly  instinctively  took  to  and  attracted.  They 
became  friends  rapidly  through  the  children,  whom  Milly 
petted.  She  learned  all  about  the  Thorntons  in  a  few  days. 
They  were  very  nice  people.  He  was  an  architect,  and  she 
had  been  a  Miss  Duncan  of  Philadelphia,  —  also  a  very  nice 
family  of  the  Quaker  order,  Milly  gathered.  Mrs.  Thornton 
talked  a  great  deal  of  an  older  brother,  who  had  gone  to 
California  for  his  health  and  had  bought  a  fruit  ranch  there 
in  the  Ventura  mountains  somewhere  south  of  Santa  Bar- 
bara. This  brother,  Edgar  Duncan,  was  expected  to  visit 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  131 

Mrs.  Thornton  during  the  summer,  and  in  the  course  of  time 
he  arrived  at  Mackinac. 

Milly  found  him  on  the  piazza  of  the  Thornton  cottage 
playing  with  the  children.  As  he  got  up  awkwardly  from  the 
floor  and  raised  his  straw  hat,  Milly  remarked  that  his 
sandy  hair  was  thin.  He  was  slight,  about  middle-aged,  and 
seemed  quite  timid.  Not  at  all  the  large  westerner  with 
bronzed  face  and  flapping  cowboy  hat  she  had  vaguely  pic- 
tured to  herself.  Nevertheless,  she  smiled  at  him  cordially,  — 

"  You  are  the  brother  I've  heard  so  much  about  ?"  she  said, 
proffering  a  hand. 

"And  you  must  be  that  new  Aunt  Milly  the  children  are 
full  of,"  he  replied,  coloring  bashfully. 

So  it  began.  For  the  next  month,  until  Milly,  having 
exhausted  the  social  possibilities  of  Mackinac,  had  to  move  on 
to  another  "resort"  in  Wisconsin,  she  saw  a  great  deal  of 
Edgar  Duncan.  They  walked  through  the  fir  woods  by 
moonlight,  boated  on  the  lake  under  the  stars,  and  read 
Milly's  literary  efforts  on  the  piazza  of  the  Thornton  cottage. 
Duncan  told  her  much  about  his  ranch  on  the  slope  of  the 
Ventura  hills  above  the  Pacific,  of  the  indolent  California 
life  in  the  sunshine,  with  an  occasional  excursion  to  Los 
Angeles  or  San  Francisco.  He  was  not  exciting  in  any  sense, 
not  very  energetic,  like  the  Chicago  men  she  had  known,  per- 
haps not  very  much  alive;  but  he  was  gentle,  and  kindly, 
and  thoughtful  for  women,  of  a  refined  and  high-minded 
race  —  the  sort  of  man  "any  woman  could  be  sure  of." 

Mrs.  Thornton,  with  much  sisterly  affection  and  no  vulgar 
ambition,  encouraged  unobtrusively  the  intimacy.  "Edgar 
is  so  lonely  out  there  on  his  ranch,"  she  explained  to  Milly, 


132  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"  I  want  him  to  come  back  east.     He  might  now,  you  know, 

—  there's  nothing  really  the  matter  with  his  health.     But 
he's  got  used  to  the  life  and  doesn't  like  our  hurry  and  the 
scramble  for  money.     Besides  he's  put  all  his  money  into 
those  lemons  and  olives.  ...     I  think  a  woman  might  be 
very  happy  out  of  the  world  in  a  place  like  that,  with  a  man 
who  loved  her  a  lot,  —  and  children,  of  course,  children,  — 
don't  you?" 

Milly  thought  so,  too.  She  was  becoming  very  tired  of 
newspaper  work,  and  of  her  single  woman's  struggle  to  main- 
tain herself  in  the  roar  of  Chicago.  The  future  looked  rather 
gray  even  through  her  habitually  rose-colored  glasses.  She 
was  twenty-four.  She  knew  the  social  game,  and  its  risks, 
better  than  two  years  before.  ...  So  she  was  very  kind  to 
Duncan,  —  she  really  liked  him  extremely,  rather  for  what 
he  was  without  than  for  what  he  had,  —  and  when  she  left 
it  was  understood  between  them  that  the  Californian  should 
return  to  his  ranch  by  the  way  of  Chicago  and  meet  Milly 
there  on  a  certain  day,  —  Monday,  the  first  of  September. 
He  was  very  particular,  sentimentally  so,  about  this  date, 

—  kept  repeating  it,  —  and  they  made  little  jokes  of  it  until 
Milly  even  particularized  the  hour  when  she  could  be  free 
to  see  him,  —  "Five  o'clock,  31  East  Acacia  Street,  —  hadn't 
you  better  write  it  down?"     But  Duncan  thought  he  could 
remember  it  very  well.     "We'll  go  somewhere  for  dinner," 
Milly  promised. 

That  was  all,  but  it  was  a  good  deal  for  the  shy  Edgar 
Duncan  to  have  arrived  at.  Milly  was  content  to  leave  it 
just  that  way,  —  vague  and  pleasant,  with  no  explicit  under- 
standing of  what  was  to  come  afterwards.  She  knew  he 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  133 

would  write  —  he  was  that  kind;  he  would  say  more  on 
paper  than  by  word  of  mouth,  much  more.  Then,  when 
they  met  again,  she  would  put  her  hand  in  his  and  without 
any  talk  it  would  have  happened.  .  .  .  He  came  with  the 
children  to  see  her  off  at  the  station,  and  as  the  fir-covered 
northern  landscape  retreated  from  the  moving  train,  Milly 
relaxed  in  her  Pullman  seat,  holding  his  roses  in  her  lap, 
and  decided  that  Edgar  Duncan  was  altogether  the  "best" 
man  she  had  ever  known  well.  She  surrendered  herself  to 
a  dream  of  a  wonderful  land  where  the  yellow  lemons  gleamed 
among  glossy  green  leaves,  and  the  distant  hills  were  pow- 
dered with  the  gray  tint  of  olive  trees,  as  Duncan  had  de- 
scribed the  ranch,  and  also  of  a  little  low  bungalow,  a  silent 
Jap  in  white  clothes  moving  back  and  forth,  and  far  below 
the  distant  murmur  of  the  Pacific  surges.  .  .  .  Her  eyes 
became  suffused :  it  wasn't  the  pinnacle  of  her  girlish  hope, 
but  it  was  Peace.  And  just  now  Milly  wanted  peace  more 
than  anything  else. 

He  wrote,  as  Milly  knew  he  would,  and  though  Milly  found 
his  letters  lacking  in  that  warmth  and  color  and  glow  in 
which  she  had  bathed  the  ranch,  they  were  tender  and  true 
letters  of  a  real  lover,  albeit  a  timid  one.  "All  his  life  he 
had  longed  for  a  real  companion,  for  a  woman  who  could  be 
a  man's  mate  as  his  mother  was  to  his  father,"  and  that  sort 
of  thing.  He  implied  again  and  again  that  not  until  he  had 
met  Milly  had  he  found  such  a  creature,  "but  now,"  etc. 
Milly  sighed.  She  was  happy,  but  not  thrilled.  Perhaps, 
she  thought,  she  was  too  old  for  thrills  —  twenty-four  — 
and  this  was  as  near  "the  real  right  thing"  as  she  was  ever 
to  come.  At  any  rate  she  meant  to  take  the  chance. 


134  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Ocanseveroc  did  not  prove  attractive :  it  was  a  hot  little 
hole  by  a  steaming,  smelly  lake,  like  Como,  only  less  select 
in  its  society  and  more  populous.  Milly  quickly  "did"  the 
resort  and  fled  back  to  Chicago  for  a  breath  of  fresh  air 
from  the  great  cooling  tub  of  Lake  Michigan.  That  was  the 
nineteenth  of  August.  She  had  twelve  days  in  which  to  get 
ready  her  articles  before  Duncan's  arrival.  On  the  hot 
train  she  planned  a  little  article  on  the  search  for  the  ideal 
resort  with  the  result  of  a  hasty  return  to  the  city  for  comfort 
and  coolness.  She  thought  it  might  be  made  amusing  and 
resolved  to  see  the  editor  about  it. 

Matters  at  home  had  scarcely  improved  during  the  lan- 
guid summer.  Horatio  sat  on  the  stoop  in  his  shirt-sleeves, 
unchided,  or  went  for  long  hours  to  a  beer-garden  he  had 
found  near  by.  He  made  no  pretence  of  looking  for  work. 
"What's  the  use  —  in  the  summer?"  Milly  stirred  the 
stagnant  domestic  atmosphere  with  her  recovered  cheerful- 
ness. She  told  them  of  her  various  adventures,  especially 
of  the  Thorntons  and  of  the  new  young  man.  Duncan  had 
given  her  some  kodaks  of  the  fruit  ranch  in  the  Ventura 
mountains,  which  she  displayed.  HE  was  coming  to  see 
her  soon,  and  she  laughed  prettily.  Grandma  maintained 
her  sour  indifference  to  Milly's  doings,  but  Horatio  took  a 
lively  interest.  He  had  always  wanted  to  go  "back  to  a 
farm"  since  he  was  a  young  man,  he  said.  It  was  the 
only  place  for  a  poor  man  to  live  these  days,  and  they  said 
those  California  ranches  were  wonderful  money-makers.  A 
man  at  Hoppers'  had  gone  out  there,  etc. 

Father  and  daughter  talked  ranch  far  into  the  hot  night. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  135 

The  next  afternoon  Milly  went  to  the  newspaper  office  to 
report  and  to  discuss  with  the  editor  her  last  inspiration  for 
an  article.  It  was  the  vacation  season  and  a  number  of 
the  desks  in  the  editorial  room  were  vacant.  Mr.  Becker's 
door  was  closed  and  shrouded  with  an  "Out  of  Town"  card. 
At  the  Sunday  editor's  table  in  the  partitioned  box  reserved 
for  this  official  was  an  unfamiliar  figure.  Milly  stopped  at 
the  threshold  and  stared.  A  young  man,  fair-haired,  in  a 
fresh  and  fetching  summer  suit  with  a  flowing  gauzy  tie, 
looked  up  from  the  table  and  smiled  at  Milly.  He  was  dis- 
tinctly not  of  the  Star  type. 

"Come  right  in,"  he  called  out  genially.  "Anything  I 
can  do  for  you?  No,  I'm  not  the  new  Sunday  editor  — 
he's  away  cooling  himself  somewheres.  ...  I  just  came  in 
here  to  finish  this  sketch." 

Milly  noticed  the  drawing-paper  and  the  India-ink  bottle 
on  the  table. 

"You're  not  Kim?"  Milly  stammered. 

"The  same." 

("Kim"  was  the  name  signed  to  some  clever  cartoons  that 
had  been  appearing  all  that  winter  in  a  rival  paper,  about 
which  there  had  been  more  or  less  talk  in  the  circles  where 
Milly  moved.) 

"So  you've  come  over  to  the  Star?"  she  said  with  im- 
mediate interest. 

"The  silver-tongued  Becker  got  me  —  for  a  price  —  a 
small  one,"  he  added  with  a  laugh,  as  if  nothing  about  him  was 
of  sufficient  consequence  to  hide. 

"I'm  so  glad.     I  like  your  pictures  awfully  well. 

"Thanks  !  .  .  .    And  you,  I  take  it,  are  la  belle  Debutante?" 


136  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"  Yes  ! "  Milly  laughed.     "  How  did  you  know  ?  " 

"Oh,"  he  replied,  and  his  tone  said,  "it's  because  you  too 
are  different  from  the  rest  here,"  which  flattered  Milly. 

"Won't  you  come  in  and  sit  down?" 

The  young  man  emptied  a  chair  by  the  simple  process  of 
tipping  it  and  presented  it  to  Milly  with  a  gallant  flourish. 
She  sat  on  the  edge  and  drew  up  her  veil  as  far  as  the  tip 
of  her  nose.  The  young  man  smiled.  Milly  smiled  back. 
They  understood  each  other  at  once,  far  better  than  either 
could  ever  understand  the  other  members  of  the  Star  staff. 
Their  clothes,  their  accents,  their  manners  announced  that 
they  came  from  the  same  world,  —  that  small  "larger  world," 
where  they  all  use  the  same  idiom. 

"Been  doing  Mackinac  and  Ocara-se-er-oc  ? "  the  young 
man  drawled  with  delightful  irony.  "Ye  gods!  What 
names ! " 

Both  laughed  with  a  pleasant  sense  of  superiority  over  a 
primitive  civilization,  though  Milly  at  least  had  hardly 
known  any  other. 

"And  they're  just  like  their  names,"  Milly  asserted, 
"awful  places!" 

"I've  not  yet  had  the  privilege  of  seeing  our  best  people  in 
their  summer  quarters,"  the  young  man  continued,  with  his 
agreeable  air  of  genial  mockery. 

"You  won't  see  them  in  those  places." 

"Or  anywhere  else  at  present,"  the  artist  sighed,  glancing 
at  his  unfinished  sketch. 

Milly  asked  to  see  the  drawing,  and  another  inspiration 
occurred  to  her.  She  told  the  young  artist  of  her  idea  for  a 
comic  article  on  the  hunt  through  the  lake  resorts  for  an 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  137 

ideal  place  of  peace  and  coolness.  He  thought  it  a  good 
topic  and  suggested  graciously  that  he  could  do  a  few  small 
pen-and-ink  illustrations  to  elucidate  the  text. 

"Oh,  would  you  !"  Milly  exclaimed  eagerly.  It  was  what 
she  had  hoped  he  would  say,  and  it  revived  her  waning  interest 
in  journalism  immensely,  the  prospect  of  collaboration  with 
this  attractive  young  artist.  (She  had  already  forgotten 
that  she  was  to  abandon  journalism  after  the  first  Monday  in 
September.) 

Later  they  went  out  to  tea  together  to  discuss  the  article. 

Jack  Bragdon,  who  signed  his  pen-and-ink  sketches  with 
the  name  of  "Kim,"  was  one  of  that  considerable  army  of 
young  adventurers  in  the  arts  who  pushed  westward  from  the 
Atlantic  seaboard  at  the  time  of  the  World's  Fair  in  Chicago  ; 
also  one  of  the  large  number  who  had  been  left  stranded 
when  the  tidal  wave  of  artistic  effort  had  receded,  exposing 
the  dead  flats  of  hard  times.  After  graduation  from  an 
eastern  college  of  the  second  class,  where  he  had  distinguished 
himself  by  composing  the  comic  opera  libretto  for  his  club 
and  drawing  for  the  college  annual,  he  had  chosen  for  himself 
the  career  of  art.  With  a  year  in  a  New  York  art  school 
and  another  spent  knocking  about  various  European  capitals 
in  a  somewhat  aimless  fashion,  an  amiable  but  financially 
restricted  family  had  declined  to  embarrass  itself  further 
for  the  present  with  his  career.  Or,  as  his  Big  Brother  in 
Big  Business  had  put  it,  "the  kid  had  better  show  what 
he  can  do  for  himself  before  we  go  any  deeper."  Jack  had 
consequently  taken  an  opportunity  to  see  the  Fair  and  re- 
mained to  earn  his  living  as  best  he  could  by  contributing 


138  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

cartoons  to  the  newspapers,  writing  paragraphs  in  a  funny 
column,  and  occasional  verse  of  the  humorous  order.  And 
he  designed  covers  for  ephemeral  magazines,  —  in  a  word, 
nimbly  snatched  the  scanty  dollars  of  Art. 

All  this  he  sketched  lightly  and  entertainingly  for  Milly's 
benefit  that  first  time. 

Already  he  had  achieved  something  of  a  vogue  socially 
in  pleasant  circles,  thanks  to  his  vivacity  and  good  breeding. 
Milly  had  heard  of  his  charms  about  the  time  of  her  Crash, 
but  had  never  happened  to  meet  him.  He  had  heard  of 
Milly,  of  course,  —  many  things  which  might  well  stir  a 
young  man's  curiosity.  So  they  smiled  at  each  other  across 
a  little  table  in  a  deserted  restaurant,  and  sat  on  into  the 
August  twilight,  sipping  cooling  drinks.  He  smoked  many 
cigarettes  which  he  rolled  with  fascinating  dexterity  between 
his  long  white  fingers,  and  talked  gayly,  while  Milly  listened 
with  ears  and  eyes  wide  open  to  the  engrossing  story  of 
Himself. 

Jack  Bragdon  was  a  much  rarer  type  in  Chicago  of  the 
early  nineties  —  or  in  any  American  city  —  than  he  would 
be  to-day.  Milly's  experience  of  the  world  had  never  brought 
her  into  close  touch  with  Art.  And  Art  has  a  fatal  fascina- 
tion for  most  women.  They  buzz  around  its  white  arc-light, 
or  tallow  dip,  like  heedless  moths  bent  on  their  own  destruc- 
tion. Art  in  the  person  of  a  handsome,  sophisticated  youth 
like  Jack  Bragdon,  who  had  seen  a  little  of  drawing-rooms 
as  well  as  the  pavements  of  strange  cities,  was  irresistible. 
(Milly  too  felt  that  she  had  in  her  something  of  the  artistic 
temperament,  which  had  never  been  properly  developed.) 

Thus  far,  even  by  his  own  account,  Bragdon  was  not  much 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  139 

of  an  artist.  He  was  clever  with  his  fingers,  —  pen  or  pen- 
cil, —  but  at  twenty-six  he  might  very  truthfully  state,  — 
"I've  been  a  rotten  loafer  always,  you  know.  But  I'm 
reformed.  Chicago's  reformed  me.  That's  what  Brother 
meant.  .  .  .  Now  watch  and  see.  I'm  not  going  to  draw 
ridiculous  pot-bellied  politicians  for  a  newspaper  —  not  after 
I  have  saved  the  fare  to  Europe  and  a  few  dollars  over  to  keep 
me  from  starving  while  I  learn  to  really  paint." 

"Of  course  you  won't  stay  here  !"  Milly  chimed  sympa- 
thetically, with  an  unconscious  sigh.  .  .  . 

It  is  marvellous  what  a  vast  amount  of  mutual  biography 
two  young  persons  of  the  opposite  sexes  can  exchange  in  a 
brief  te'te-a-te'te.  By  the  time  Milly  and  the  young  artist 
were  strolling  slowly  northward  hi  the  sombre  city  twilight, 
they  had  become  old  friends,  and  Milly  was  hearing  about 
the  girl  in  Rome,  the  fascination  of  artist  life  in  Munich,  the 
stunning  things  in  the  last  Salon,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  They 
parted  at  Milly's  doorstep  without  speaking  of  another 
meeting,  for  it  never  occurred  to  either  that  they  should 
not  meet  —  the  next  day. 

The  gardens  of  that  California  Hesperides  were  already 
getting  dim  in  Milly's  memory,  blotted  out  by  a  more  intoxi- 
cating vision. 


IX 

MILLY   IN   LOVE 

THE  next  meeting  was  not  farther  off  than  the  next  noon. 
They  lunched  together,  to  talk  further  of  their  collaboration, 
and  from  luncheon  went  to  the  Art  Institute  to  see  the  pic- 
tures, most  of  which  Bragdon  disposed  off  condescendingly 
as  "old-style  stuff."  Milly,  who  had  been  taught  to  rever- 
ence this  selection  of  masterpieces,  which  were  the  local 
admiration,  learned  that  there  were  realms  beyond  her  ken. 

The  next  day  saw  another  meeting  and  the  next  yet 
another.  Then  there  was  an  intermission  —  Bragdon  had  to 
finish  some  work  —  and  Milly  felt  restless.  But  there  en- 
sued ten  delicious  days  of  music  and  beer-gardens  and  walks 
in  the  parks,  luncheons  and  suppers,  —  one  starry  Sunday 
spent  scrambling  among  the  ravines  on  the  north  shore  and 
picnicking  on  the  sandy  beach,  listening  to  the  sadly  sooth- 
ing sweetness  of  Omar  —  (yes,  they  read  Omar  in  those  days, 
the  young  did  !)  —  with  little  opalescent  waves  twinkling 
at  their  feet.  Milly  never  paused  to  think  one  moment  of 
all  those  ten  precious  days.  She  was  blissfully  content  with 
the  world  as  it  was,  except  when  she  was  at  home,  and  then 
she  was  plotting  skilfully  "another  occasion."  If  she  had 
stopped  to  think,  she  would  have  murmured  to  herself, 
"At  last !  This  must  be  the  real,  right  thing  !" 

He  was  so  handsome,  so  full  of  strong  male  youth  and  joy, 
of  large  hopes  and  careless  intentions,  and  he  was  also  exotic 

140 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  141 

to  Milly,  —  a  bit  of  that  older,  more  complex  civilization 
she  had  always  longed  for  in  her  prairie  limitations.  His 
horizon  had  been  broader  than  hers,  she  felt,  though  he  was  a 
mere  boy  in  worldly  knowledge.  He  even  dressed  differently 
from  the  men  she  knew,  with  a  dash  of  daring  color  in  waist- 
coat and  ties  that  proclaimed  the  budding  artist.  And  above 
all  he  embodied  the  Romance  of  Art,  —  that  fatal  lure  for 
aspiring  womankind.  The  sphere  of  creation  is  hermaphro- 
ditic :  he  too  was  fine  and  feminine,  unlike  the  coarser  types 
of  men.  He  craved  Reputation  and  would  have  it,  Milly 
assured  him  confidently.  She  was  immediately  convinced 
of  his  high  talent.  Alas  !  She  sighed  when  she  said  it, 
for  she  knew  that  his  gifts  would  quickly  waft  him  beyond 
her  reach  on  his  upward  way.  Chicago  could  not  hold  one 
like  him  long :  he  was  for  other,  beautifuller  ports  of  destiny  ! 

At  four  forty-five  on  the  afternoon  of  September  first, 

—  a  Monday,  —  a  tall,  somewhat  nervous  man  rang  the 
bell  of  31  East  Acacia  Street  and  inquired  for  Miss  Ridge. 
He  came  in  and  waited  when  he  learned  from  the  little  old 
lady  who  opened  the  door  that  Milly  was  not  at  home.     He 
waited  in  the  small  front  room,  sombrely  darkened,  where 
the  tragedy  of  Milly's  first  engagement  ring  had  taken  place, 

—  waited  until  six  forty-five,  then  at  the  signs  of  preparation 
for  the  evening  meal  slipped  out.     But  he  was  back  at  seven 
forty-five  and  again  came  in.     This  time  Mrs.  Ridge  intro- 
duced herself  and  invited  him  politely  to  await  her  grand- 
daughter's  return.     "  She's   very  uncertain  in  her  hours," 
the  old  lady  explained  with  a  deprecatory  little  laugh,  "  since 
she  has  undertaken  this  newspaper  work.     It  seems  to  keep 


142  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

her  at  the  office  a  great  deal  of  late."  .  .  .  We  may  leave 
Edgar  Duncan  there  in  the  little  front  room,  being  enter- 
tained by  Mrs.  Ridge  in  her  most  gracious  manner,  while 
we  go  in  search  of  the  truant  Milly. 

She  might  have  been  found  at  an  unpretentious  German 
beer-garden  far  out  on  the  North  Side.  Bragdon  and  Milly 
had  discovered  this  particular  retreat,  which  was  small  and 
secluded  and  usually  rather  empty.  It  seemed  to  Milly 
quite  " Bohemian"  to  drop  into  the  garden  late  in  the  after- 
noon and  rouse  the  sleepy  proprietor  to  fetch  them  cool 
stone  mugs  of  foaming  beer,  which  the  artist  drank  and  which 
she  sipped  at. 

On  this  Monday  afternoon  they  had  installed  themselves 
in  the  little  arbor  at  the  remote  end  of  the  tiny  garden,  where 
they  were  shielded  by  the  dusty  vines  from  any  observation, 
and  thus  the  quarter  hours  and  the  halves  slipped  by  un- 
heeded. The  artist  told  her  again  of  his  aspirations  to  paint, 
—  "the  real  thing,"  to  "go  in  for  the  big  stunts."  Milly 
listened  sympathetically.  That  was  what  he  should  do, 
of  course,  —  have  a  career,  a  man's  career,  —  even  if  it 
parted  him  from  her  for  always.  All  her  life  she  had 
wished  to  be  an  "inspiration"  in  some  man's  life-work. 
What  greater  thing  than  to  inspire  an  Artist  to  his  glorious 
fulfilment?  .  .  . 

Imperceptibly  their  words  became  more  personal  and  more 
tender.  He  wanted  to  paint  her  some  day,  as  she  had  lain 
on  the  beach,  with  her  lovely  bronze  hair,  her  wide  blue 
eyes,  and  the  little  waves"  curling  up  towards  her  feet.  .  .  . 
Dusk  fell,  and  they  forgot  to  eat.  ...  At  the  moment  when 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  143 

Edgar  Duncan  was  describing  to  Mrs.  Ridge  for  the  second 
time  the  exact  location  of  Arivista  Ranch  on  the  slope  of 
the  Ventura  hills,  Milly's  head  was  resting  close  to  the 
artist's  face  and  very  real  tears  were  in  her  eyes  —  tears  of 
joy  —  as  her  heart  beat  wildly  under  her  lover's  kisses  and 
her  ears  sang  with  his  passionate  words.  .  .  . 

For  the  one  thing  that  the  young  artist  had  sworn  to 
himself  should  never  happen  to  HIM,  —  at  any  rate  not  until 
he  was  old  and  successful,  —  the  very  thing  that  Milly  had 
laughed  at  as  preposterous  —  "me  fall  in  love  with  a  poor 
man  !"  —  had  come  to  pass.  Both  had  done  it. 

"I  shan't  spoil  all  your  future  for  you,  shall  I,  dear?"  she 
whispered,  her  mouth  close  to  his.  He  gave  her  the  only 
proper  answer.  .  .  . 

"It  shan't  make  any  difference,"  she  said  later,  in  a  calmer 
moment.  "You  shall  have  your  life,  dear,  and  become  a 
great  painter." 

"Of  course!"  Youth  replied  robustly.  "And  I'll  do  a 
great  picture  of  you  !" 

How  wonderful !  How  wonderful  it  all  was,  Milly  thought, 
as  they  threaded  their  way  homewards  through  the  slovenly, 
garish  Chicago  streets,  mindful  of  naught  but  themselves 
and  their  Secret.  How  could  anything  so  poetically  wonder- 
ful happen  in  workaday  Chicago?  And  Milly  thought  to 
herself  how  could  any  woman  consider  for  a  moment  sacri- 
ficing THIS  —  "the  real,  right  thing" — 'for  any  bribe  on 
earth?  .  .  „ 

As  they  neared  the  little  house,  Milly  perceived  the  light 
hi  the  front  room  and  with  an  intuition  of  something  un- 
pleasant to  follow  dismissed  her  lover  peremptorily,  with  a 


144  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

last  daring  kiss  beneath  the  street-light,  and  tripped  into 
the  house. 

It  all  came  over  her  as  soon  as  the  tall  figure  rose  from  the 
uncomfortable  corner  sofa :  she  knew  what  she  had  done  and 
she  was  filled  with  real  concern  for  the  Other  One. 

"Edgar  !"  she  cried.     "Have  you  been  waiting  long?" 

"Some  time,"  Mrs.  Ridge  observed  with  reproof. 

"Since  four  forty-five,"  Duncan  admitted,  and  added  with 
a  touch  of  sentiment.  "  I  came  fifteen  minutes  before  the 
time." 

Milly  cast  a  fleeting  glance  backward  over  what  had  hap- 
pened to  her  since  four  forty-five  ! 

"But  it  doesn't  matter  now,"  he  said  with  intention,  "all 
the  waiting !" 

Mrs.  Ridge  discreetly  withdrew  at  this  point. 

"I'm  so  glad  to  see  you,"  Milly  began  lamely.  "Do  sit 
down." 

"I've  been  sitting  a  long  time,"  Edgar  Duncan  remarked, 
patiently  reseating  himself  on  the  stiff  sofa. 

"I'm  so  sorry!" 

"Did  you  forget?" 

"  Yes,  I  forgot  all  about  it,"  Milly  admitted  bluntly.  "  You 
see  so  much  has  happened  since  — " 

"Then  you  didn't  get  my  letters?"  he  pressed  on  eagerly, 
ignoring  Milly's  last  words. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  got  all  your  letters,"  she  said  hastily,  remember- 
ing that  she  had  not  found  time  or  heart  to  open  the  last 
bulky  three,  which  lay  upstairs  on  her  dressing-table. 
"Beautiful  letters  they  were,"  she  added  sentimentally  and 
irrelevantly,  thinking,  "What  letters  Jack  will  write  !" 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  145 

It  is  useless  to  follow  this  painful  scene  in  further  detail. 
Timid  as  Edgar  Duncan  was  by  nature  he  was  man  enough 
to  strike  for  what  he  wanted  when  he  had  his  chance,  —  as 
he  had  struck  manfully  in  those  bulky  letters.  And  he  re- 
peated their  message  now  in  simple  words. 

"Milly,  will  you  go  back  with  me?  .  .  .  Fve  waited  for 
you  all  my  life." 

Touched  by  the  pathos  of  this  genuine  feeling,  Milly's 
eyes  filled  with  tears  and  she  stammered,  — 

"Oh,  I  can't  —  I  really  can't !" 

"Why  not?" 

(She  would  have  been  quite  willing  to  make  the  journey 
with  him,  if  she  might  have  flown  straightway  back  to  the  arms 
of  her  artist  lover  !) 

"You  see  —  it's  different  —  I  can't  — "  Milly  could  not 
bring  herself  to  deal  the  blow.  It  seemed  too  absurd  to  state 
baldly  that  in  twelve  days  a  man  had  come  into  her  life, 
whom  she  had  never  set  eyes  on  thirteen  days  before,  but  who 
nevertheless  had  made  it  impossible  for  her  to  do  what  before 
that  time  she  had  looked  forward  to  with  serene  content. 
Such  things  happened  in  books,  but  were  ridiculous  to  say  ! 

"You  care  for  some  one  else?  " 

Milly  nodded,  and  her  eyes  dropped  tears  fast.  It  all 
seemed  very  sad,  almost  tragic.  She  was  sorry  for  herself 
as  well  as  for  him.  .  .  . 

If  he  felt  it  inexplicable  that  he  had  not  been  allowed  to 
suspect  this  deep  attachment  before,  he  was  too  much  of  a 
man  to  mention  it.  He  took  his  blow  and  did  not  argue 
about  it. 

"I'm  so  sorry  !"  Milly  cried. 


146  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"It  had  to  be,"  he  said,  hastily  putting  out  a  hand  to  her. 
"I  shall  love  you  always,  Milly  !"  (It  was  the  thing  they 
said  in  books,  but  in  this  case  it  sounded  forlornly  true.) 
"I'm  glad  I've  had  the  chance  to  love  you/'  and  he  was  gone. 

Milly  dropped  tears  all  the  way  upstairs  to  her  room,  where 
she  shut  herself  in  and  locked  herself  against  family  intrusion. 
In  spite  of  her  tears  she  was  glad  for  what  she  had  done. 
A  woman's  heart  seemed  to  her  ample  justification  for 
inconsistencies,  even  if  it  jammed  other  hearts  on  the  way 
to  its  goal.  It  was  fate,  that  was  all,  —  fate  that  Jack 
Bragdon  should  have  walked  into  her  life  just  twelve  days 
before  it  would  have  been  too  late.  Fate  is  a  wondrously 
consoling  word,  especially  in  the  concerns  of  the  heart.  It 
absolves  from  personal  responsibility. 

So  Milly  went  to  sleep,  with  tears  still  on  her  eyelashes,  but 
a  smile  on  her  lips,  and  dreamed  of  her  own  happy  fate.  At 
last  "the  real,  right  thing"  was  hers! 


MILLY  MARKIES 

SHE  awoke  with  a  sensation  of  bliss  —  a  never  ending 
happiness  to  be  hers.  Yet  there  were  some  disagreeable 
episodes  before  this  bliss  could  be  perfected.  For  one  thing 
Horatio  took  the  announcement  of  the  new  engagement  very 
hard,  —  unexpectedly  so.  Grandma  Ridge  received  it  in 
stony  silence  with  a  sarcastic  curve  to  her  wrinkled  lips, 
as  if  to  say,  —  "Hope  you  know  your  mind  this  time!" 
But  Horatio  spluttered  :  — 

"  What  ?  You  don't  mean  that  la-di-da  newspaper  pup  who 
parts  his  hair  in  the  middle  ?" 

(To  part  one's  hair  in  the  middle  instead  of  upon  the  slope 
of  the  head  was  Horatio's  aversion  —  it  indicated  to  him  a 
lack  of  serious,  masculine  purpose  in  a  young  man.) 

"I  thought  you  would  do  better  than  that,  Milly.  .  .  . 
What's  he  making  with  his  newspaper  pictures?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Milly  replied  loftily. 

She  might  guess  that  it  was  in  the  neighborhood  of  thirty 
dollars  a  week,  sometimes  increased  by  a  few  dollars  through 
a  magazine  cover  or  commercial  poster.  But  in  her  present 
exalted  mood  it  was  completely  indifferent  to  Milly  whether 
her  lover  was  earning  twenty  dollars  or  two  thousand  a 
week.  They  would  live  somehow  —  of  course :  all  young 
lovers  did.  .  .  .  And  was  he  not  a  genius  ?  Milly  had  every 
confidence. 

147 


148  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"You  might  just  as  well  have  married  Ted  Donovan," 
Horatio  groaned.  (Donovan  was  the  young  man  at 
Hoppers'  whom  Milly  had  disdained  early  in  her  West  Side 
career.)  "I  saw  him  on  the  street  the  other  day,  and  he's 
doing  finely  —  got  a  rise  last  January." 

"He's  not  fashionable  enough  for  Milly,"  Grandma 
commented. 

"I  must  say  you  treated  that  Mr.  Duncan  pretty  badly," 
Horatio  continued  with  unusual  severity. 

"I  should  say  so  !"  Grandma  interposed. 

Milly  might  think  so  too,  but  she  was  serenely  indiffer- 
ent to  all  the  defeated  prospects,  the  bleeding  hearts  over 
which  she  must  pass  to  the  fulfilment  of  her  being.  It 
was  useless  to  explain  to  her  father  and  her  grandmother 
the  imperious  call  of  "the  real,  right  thing,"  and  how  im- 
measurably Jack  differed  from  Ted  Donovan,  Clarence 
Albert,  or  even  Edgar  Duncan,  and  how  indifferent  to  a 
true  woman  must  be  all  the  pain  in  the  world,  once  she  had 
found  her  Ideal. 

Horatio  and  his  mother  might  feel  the  waste  of  all  their 
efforts  in  behalf  of  Milly,  —  the  costly  removal  from  the  West 
Side  home,  the  disastrous  venture  in  the  tea  and  coffee 
business,  and  all  the  rest,  —  to  result  in  this,  her  engagement 
to  a  "mere  newspaper  feller  who  parts  his  hair  in  the  middle." 
It  was  another  example  of  the  mournful  experience  of  age,  — • 
the  pouring  forth  of  heart's  blood  in  useless  sacrifice  to  Youth. 
But  Milly  saw  that  her  artist  lover,  —  and  the  flame  in  her 
heart,  the  song  in  her  ears,  —  could  not  have  been  without 
all  the  devious  turnings  of  her  small  career.  Each  step  had 
been  needed  to  bring  her  at  last  into  Jack's  arms,  and  there- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  149 

fore  the  toil  of  the  road  was  nothing  —  in  her  eyes.     That 
was  the  way  Milly  looked  at  it. 

Could  one  blame  her,  remembering  her  sentimental  educa- 
tion, the  sentimental  ideals  that  for  centuries  upon  centuries 
men  have  imposed  upon  the  more  imitative  sex  ?  She  could 
not  see  the  simple  selfishness  of  her  life,  —  not  then,  perhaps 
later  when  she  too  became  a  mother. 

The  catastrophe  of  her  first  engagement  had  cut  Milly 
off  from  her  more  fashionable  friends  and  the  world  outside, 
and  this  second  emotional  crisis  cut  her  off  from  the  sympathy 
of  her  family.  After  that  first  wail  Horatio  was  glumly 
silent,  as  if  his  cup  of  sorrow  was  now  filled,  and  Grandma 
Ridge  went  her  way  in  stern  oblivion  of  Milly.  The  girl 
was  so  happy  —  and  so  much  away  from  home  —  that  she 
hardly  felt  the  cold  domestic  atmosphere. 

A  few  short  weeks  afterwards,  however,  Mrs.  Ridge 
announced  to  her  that  a  tenant  having  been  found  for  the 
house  they  should  move  the  first  of  the  month. 

" Where  are  you  going?"  Milly  asked,  a  trifle  bewildered. 

"Your  father  and  I  are  going  to  board  on  the  West  Side," 
her  grandmother  replied  shortly,  implying  that  Milly  could 
do  as  she  pleased,  now  that  she  was  her  own  mistress. 

"Why  over  there?" 

"Your  father  has  secured  a  place  in  his  old  business." 

From  the  few  further  details  offered  by  her  grandmother 
Milly  inferred  that  it  was  a  very  humble  place  indeed,  and 
that  only  dire  necessity  had  forced  Horatio  to  accept  it,  —  to 
sit  at  the  gate  in  the  great  establishment  where  once  he  had 
held  some  authority. 


150  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"Poor  papa  !"  Milly  sighed. 

"It's  rather  late  for  you  to  be  sorry,  now,"  the  old  lady 
retorted  pitilessly.  She  was  of  the  puritan  temper  that 
loves  to  scatter  irrefutable  moral  logic. 

It  was  not  until  long  afterward  that  Milly  learned  all  the 
part  the  indomitable  old  lady  had  played  in  this  crisis  of  her 
son's  affairs.  She  had  not  only  gone  to  see  Mr.  Baxter,  one 
of  the  Hopper  partners  who  attended  the  Second  Presby- 
terian Church,  and  begged  him  to  give  her  son  employment 
once  more,  but  she  had  humbled  herself  to  appeal  personally 
to  their  enemy  Henry  Snowden  and  entreat  him,  for  old 
friendship's  sake,  to  be  magnanimous  to  a  broken  man.  In 
these  painful  interviews  she  had  not  spared  Milly.  She  had 
succeeded. 

Sometime  during  the  last  hurried  weeks  of  their  occupancy 
of  the  Acacia  Street  house,  Milly  managed  to  have  her  lover 
come  to  Sunday  supper  and  make  formal  announcement  of 
their  intentions  to  the  old  people.  For  long  years  afterwards 
she  would  remember  the  final  scene  of  her  emotional  career 
in  the  little  front  room  when  her  father  had  to  shake  hands 
with  the  young  artist  on  the  exact  spot  where  Clarence's 
glittering  diamond  had  lain  disdained,  where  the  faithful 
ranchman  had  received  his  blow,  standing,  full  in  the  face. 

Little  Horatio  looked  gray  and  old ;  his  lips  trembled  and 
his  hand  shook  as  he  greeted  Bragdon. 

"Well,  sir,  so  you  and  Milly  have  made  up  your  minds  to 
get  married?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Hope  you'll  make  each  other  happy." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  151 

"We  shall !"  both  chorused. 

"And  I  hope  you'll  be  able  to  support  her." 

"We'll  live  on  nothing,"  Milly  bubbled  gayly. 

"First  time  then  I've  known  you  to,"  Horatio  retorted 
sourly. 

It  was  the  only  bitter  thing  the  little  man  ever  said  to  his 
daughter,  and  it  was  the  bitterness  of  disappointed  hopes 
for  her  that  forced  the  words  from  him  then.  Perhaps,  too, 
Horatio  had  permitted  himself  to  dream  of  Hesperidian  ap- 
ples of  gold  in  eternal  sunshine  on  the  slopes  of  the  Ventura 
hills  and  a  peaceful  old  age  far  from  the  roaring,  dirty  city 
where  he  had  failed.  But  when  he  spoke  he  was  not  think- 
ing of  himself,  only  of  the  dangers  for  his  one  loved  child. 

The  meeting  was  hardly  a  cheerful  one.  Milly,  hi  the 
exuberance  of  her  new  joy,  could  see  no  reason  why  everybody 
should  not  be  as  happy  and  hopeful  as  she  was.  But  the 
older  people,  although  they  were  scrupulously  polite  to  the 
young  artist,  let  their  aloofness  be  felt  in  a  chilly  manner. 
This  was  Milly's  affair,  they  implied :  she  was  running  her 
life  to  suit  herself,  as  American  children  were  wont  to  do, 
without  advice  from  her  elders.  The  young  man  was  ob- 
viously ill  at  ease. 

Milly  felt  that  he  was  too  large  for  the  picture.  She  had 
never  been  ashamed  of  her  humble  home,  —  not  with  all 
her  fashionable  friends,  not  with  her  rich  lover.  But  now 
she  was  conscious  of  the  poor  impression  it  must  make 
upon  the  artist  youth,  who  was  so  immeasurably  superior 
to  it  in  culture.  When  the  old  people  had  withdrawn  after 
supper,  leaving  the  lovers  to  themselves  in  the  little  front 
parlor,  there  were  several  moments  of  awkward  silence 


152  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

between  them.  Milly  was  distressed  for  him,  but  she  did 
not  try  to  apologize.  She  said  in  her  heart  that  she  would 
make  it  up  to  him,  —  all  that  she  lacked  in  family  back- 
ground. A  woman  could,  she  was  convinced. 

Possibly  she  did  not  fully  realize  how  depressingly  his  situa- 
tion had  been  brought  home  to  him  by  this  first  contact  with 
the  Ridge  household.  He  knew  quite  well  how  far  thirty 
dollars  a  week  went,  with  one  man,  and,  as  has  been  said,  the 
last  intention  of  his  soul  was  to  induce  any  woman  to  share  it 
with  him.  Nor  had  he  meant  to  seek  out  a  rich  wife,  al- 
though having  brought  good  introductions  he  had  made 
his  way  easily  into  pleasant  circles  in  his  new  home.  Mar- 
riage had  no  part  in  his  scheme  of  things.  But  he  had  been 
snared  by  the  same  tricksy  sprite  of  blood  and  youth  that 
had  inflamed  Milly.  Now  his  was  the  main  responsibility, 
and  he  must  envisage  the  future  he  had  chosen  soberly.  No 
more  pleasant  dallying  in  rich  drawing-rooms,  no  more  day- 
dreaming over  the  varied  paths  of  an  entertaining  career.  It 
was  Matrimony  !  No  wonder  —  and  no  discredit  to  him  — 
that  the  young  man  was  somewhat  overwhelmed  when  he 
contemplated  what  that  meant  in  material  terms.  Never 
for  the  fraction  of  a  moment,  it  should  be  said,  did  he  think 
of  evading  the  responsibility.  His  American  chivalry  would 
have  made  that  impossible,  even  if  he  had  desired  it.  And 
Milly  had  his  heart  and  his  senses  completely  enthralled. 

"Dearest,"  she  said  to  him  that  evening,  divining  the 
sombre  course  of  his  thoughts,  "it  will  be  so  different  with  us 
when  we  are  married.  We'll  have  everything  pretty,  even  if 
it's  only  two  rooms,  won't  we?"  And  her  yielding  lips 
sealed  his  bondage  firmer  than  ever,  though  he  might  know 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  153 

that  beauty,  even  in  two  rooms,  costs  money.     He  shut  his 
eyes  and  hoped  —  which  is  the  only  way  in  such  cases. 

Milly  did  not  tell  him  that  within  a  fortnight  she  should 
be  without  even  this  home. 

"  There's  going  to  be  no  engagement  this  time,"  Milly 
reported  briskly  to  Sally  Norton,  when  she  announced  her 
news,  "for  I  had  enough  of  that  before,  with  all  the  fuss. 
Jack  and  I  are  both  perfectly  free.  We're  just  going  to  be 
married  some  day  —  that's  all." 

" Milly!  Well  I  never!"  Sally  gasped,  amid  shrieks  of 
laughter.  "  Not  really  ?  You  don't  mean  that  kid  ?  " 

(Sally  was  conducting  a  serious  affair  herself,  with  a  wary 
old  bachelor,  whom  ultimately  she  led  in  triumph  to  the 
altar.  Ever  after  she  referred  to  Mr.  John  Bragdon  as 
Milly's  " kid  lover"). 

"I  think  it  splendid!"  Vivie  pronounced  in  a  burst  of 
appreciation.  "It's  the  real  thing,  dear.  You  are  both 
young  and  brave.  You  are  willing  to  make  sacrifices  for 
your  hearts." 

Milly  was  not  yet  conscious  of  making  any  tremendous 
sacrifice.  Nevertheless,  she  adopted  easily  this  sentimental- 
ized view  of  her  marriage.  And  Vivie  Norton  went  about 
among  their  friends  proclaiming  Milly's  heroism.  Some 
people  were  amused ;  some  were  sceptical ;  a  few  pitied  the 
young  man.  "Milly,  a  poor  man's  wife  —  never!  For 
he  is  poor,  isn't  he,  a  newspaper  artist  ?  " 

"He  has  a  great  deal  of  talent,"  Vivie  Norton  asserted  with 
assurance.  Milly  had  so  informed  her. 

"But  an  artist!"   and   Chicago  shrugged  its  shoulders 


154  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

dubiously.  An  artist,  at  least  a  resident  specimen  of  the 
craft,  might  be  a  drawing-room  lap-dog,  unmarried,  but 
married  he  soon  became  a  seedy  member  of  society,  some- 
where between  a  clerk  and  a  college  professor  in  social  stand- 
ing. One  of  the  smarter  women  Milly  knew,  Mrs.  James 
Lamereux,  exclaimed  when  she  heards  the  news,  —  "It's 
beautiful,  —  these  days  when  the  women  as  well  as  the  men 
are  so  keen  for  the  main  chance  in  everything."  It  was 
rumored  there  had  been  a  sentimental  episode  in  this  lady's 
past,  the  fragrance  of  which  still  lay  in  her  heart.  Meeting 
Milly  on  the  street  she  congratulated  the  girl  heartily,  — 
"And,  my  dear,  you'll  have  such  an  interesting  life  —  you'll 
know  lots  of  clever  people  and  do  unconventional  things,  — 
be  free,  you  know,  as  WE  are  not"  ....  But  Mrs.  Jonas 
Haggenash  remarked  when  some  one  told  her  the  news, — 
"The  little  fool !  Now  she's  gone  and  done  it." 

In  general  the  verdict  of  friends  seemed  to  be  suspended : 
they  would  wait  and  see,  preserving  meantime  an  attitude 
of  amiable  neutrality  and  good-will  towards  this  outbreak  of 
idealism.  But  Milly  was  not  troubling  herself  about  what 
people  thought  or  said.  This  time  she  had  the  full  courage 
of  her  convictions.  The  only  one  of  her  old  friends  she  cared 
to  confide  in  deeply  was  Eleanor  Kemp.  That  lady  listened 
with  troubled,  yet  sympathetic  eyes.  "Oh,  my  dear,"  she 
murmured,  kissing  Milly  many  times.  "My  dear!  My 
dear!"  she  repeated  as  if  she  did  not  trust  herself  to  say 
more.  "  I  so  hope  you'll  be  happy  —  that  it  will  be  right 
this  time." 

"Of  course  it  is"  Milly  retorted,  hurt  by  the  shadow  of 
doubt  implied. 


ONE   WOMAN'S   LIFE  155 

"  You  know  it  takes  so  much  for  two  people  to  live  together 
always,  even  when  they  have  plenty  of  money." 

"But  when  they  love,"  Milly  rejoined,  according  to  her 
creed. 

"Even  when  they  love,"  the  older  woman  affirmed 
gravely. 

She  could  see  beyond  the  immediate  glamor  those  monoto- 
nous years  of  commonplace  living, — struggle  and  effort.  She 
knew  from  experience  how  much  of  life  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  emotions  and  the  soul,  but  merely  with  the  stomach 
and  other  vulgar  functions  of  the  body. 

"I  haven't  a  doubt,  —  not  one  !"    Milly  affirmed. 

"That's  right  —  and  I  oughtn't  to  suggest  any.  .  .  .  You 
must  bring  Mr.  Bragdon  to  dinner  Sunday.  Walter  and  I 
want  to  see  him.  .  .  .  When  are  you  to  be  married?" 

"Soon,"  Milly  replied  vaguely. 

"That's  best,  too." 

Then  Milly  confessed  to  her  old  friend  the  dark  condition 
of  the  Ridge  fortunes,  with  the  uncomfortable  fact  that  very 
shortly  she  herself  would  be  without  a  home. 

"I  must  find  some  place  to  stay  —  but  it  won't  be  for 
long." 

"  You  must  come  here  and  stay  with  us  as  long  as  you  will," 
Mrs.  Kemp  promptly  said  with  true  kindliness.  "I  insist ! 
Walter  would  want  it,  if  I  didn't  —  he's  very  fond  of  you, 
too." 

Thus  fortune  smiled  again  upon  Milly,  and  the  two  friends 
plunged  into  feminine  details  of  dress  and  domestic  contri- 
vance. Eleanor  Kemp,  who  had  a  gift  lying  unused  of  being 
a  capable  manager,  a  poor  man's  helpmate,  tried  her  best 


156  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

to  interest  Milly  in  the  little  methods  of  economizing  and 
doing  by  which  dollars  are  pushed  to  their  utmost  usefulness. 
Milly  listened  politely,  but  she  felt  sure  that  "all  that  would 
work  out  right  in  time."  She  could  not  believe  that  Jack 
would  be  poor  always.  .  .  .  The  older  woman  smiled  at 
her  confidence,  and  after  she  had  gone  shook  her  head. 

The  young  artist  had  his  due  share  of  pride.  When  he 
realized  that  the  woman  he  loved  and  meant  to  marry  was 
staying  with  the  Kemps  because  she  had  no  other  refuge,  he 
urged  their  immediate  marriage,  though  he  also  had  a  fair- 
sized  package  of  bills  in  his  desk  drawer  and  needed  a  few 
months  in  which  to  straighten  out  his  affairs.  Milly  was 
eager  to  be  married,  —  "When  all  would  come  right  some- 
how." So  she  opposed  no  objection. 

Indeed  as  she  let  her  lover  understand,  she  was  indifferent 
about  the  mere  ceremony.  She  would  go  and  live  with  him 
any  time,  anywhere,  if  it  weren't  for  the  talk  it  would  make 
and  hurting  her  father's  feelings.  Milly  was,  of  course,  an 
essentially  monogamic  creature,  like  any  normal,  healthy 
woman.  She  meant  simply  that,  once  united  with  the  man 
she  really  loved,  the  thing  was  eternal.  If  he  should  cease 
to  love  her,  it  would  be  the  end  of  everything  for  her,  no 
matter  whether  she  had  the  legal  bond  or  not.  However 
flattered  her  lover  may  have  been  by  this  exhibition  of 
trust,  Bragdon  was  too  American  in  instinct  to  entertain 
the  proposal  seriously.  "What's  the  use  of  that,  anyway?" 
he  said.  "We  mean  to  stick  —  we  might  as  well  get  the 
certificate." 

So,  as  Milly  confided  to  Eleanor  Kemp,  they  determined 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  157 

"  just  to  go  somewhere  and  have  it  done  as  quickly  as  possible, 
without  fuss  and  feathers." 

And  Mrs.  Kemp,  realizing  what  a  sacrifice  this  sort  of 
marriage  must  mean  to  any  girl,  —  without  the  pomp  and 
ceremony,  —  felt  that  it  was  a  good  sign  for  the  couple's 
future,  showing  a  real  desire  to  seek  the  essentials  and 
dispense  with  the  frills.  She  and  her  husband  had  planned 
to  give  the  young  adventurers  a  quiet  but  conventional  home 
wedding,  with  friends  and  a  reception.  But  she  readily 
acquiesced  in  Milly's  idea,  and  one  bleak  Saturday  in  January 
slipped  off  with  the  lovers  to  a  neighboring  church,  and  after 
seeing  them  lawfully  wedded  by  a  parson  left  them  to 
their  two  days'  holiday,  which  was  all  the  honeymoon  they 
allowed  themselves  at  this  time.  .  .  . 

Milly  was  a  fresh  and  blooming  bride  in  a  becoming  gray 
broadcloth  suit,  and  as  she  stood  before  the  faded  parson 
beside  her  chosen  man  to  take  the  eternal  vows  of  fidelity, 
no  woman  ever  gave  herself  more  completely  to  the  one 
of  her  heart.  The  wonderful  song  of  bliss  that  had  been 
singing  inside  her  all  these  last  weeks  burst  into  a  triumphal 
poem.  She  felt  curiously  exalted,  scarcely  herself.  Was 
she  not  giving  everything  she  had  as  a  woman  to  her  loved 
one,  without  one  doubt  ?  Had  she  not  been  true  to  woman's 
highest  instinct,  to  her  heart  ?  She  had  rejected  all  the  bribes 
of  worldliness  in  order  to  obtain  "the  real,  right  thing," 
and  she  felt  purified,  ennobled,  having  thus  fulfilled  the 
ideals  of  her  creed.  .  .  .  She  turned  to  her  husband  a  radiant 
face  to  be  kissed,  —  a  face  in  which  shone  pride,  confidence, 
happiness. 

As  the  older  woman,  with  tear-dimmed  eyes,  watched  the 


158  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

two  bind  themselves  together  for  the  long  journey,  she  mur- 
mured to  herself  like  a  prayer,  —  " She's  such  a  woman! 
Such  a  dear  woman  !  She  MUST  be  happy." 

That  was  the  secret  of  Milly's  hold  upon  all  her  women 
friends :  they  felt  the  woman  in  her,  the  pure  character  of 
their  sex  more  highly  expressed  in  her  than  in  any  one  else 
they  knew.  She  was  the  unconscious  champion  of  their 
hearts. 

Again  the  older  woman  murmured  prayerfully,  —  "What 
will  she  do  with  life  ?  What  will  she  do  ?  " 

For  like  the  wise  woman  she  was  she  knew  that  in  most 
cases  it  is  the  woman  who  makes  marriage  sing  like  a  per- 
petual song  or  become  a  sullen  silence.  All  the  way  to  her 
home  she  kept  repeating  to  herself,  — 

"What  will  she  make  of  it  ?    Milly  ! " 


PART  THREE 
ASPIRATIONS 


THE   NEW   HOME 

THEY  took  a  tiny,  four-room  apartment  far,  far  out  on  the 
North  Side.  It  was  close  to  the  sandy  shore  of  the  Lake; 
from  the  rear  porch,  which  was  perched  on  wooden  stilts  in 
the  fashion  of  Chicago  apartments,  the  gray  blue  waters  of 
the  great  lake  could  be  seen.  In  the  next  block  there  were  a 
few  scrubby  oak  trees,  still  adorned,  even  in  January,  with 
rustling  brown  leaves,  which  gave  something  of  a  country 
air  to  the  landscape.  By  an  ironical  accident  the  new  apart- 
ment they  had  chosen  happened  to  be  not  far  from  the  spot 
where  Clarence  Albert  had  wished  to  build  his  home.  There 
was  still  much  vacant  property  in  this  neighborhood,  as  well 
as  the  free  lake  beach,  which  attracted  the  lovers,  and 
though  it  was  a  tiresome  car-ride  to  the  centre  of  the  city 
Milly  did  not  expect  to  make  many  journeys  back  and  forth. 

At  first  she  had  had  some  idea  of  resuming  her  newspaper 
work,  but  that  had  become  almost  negligible  of  late,  since  her 
preoccupation  with  love,  and  when  she  approached  Mr. 
Becker,  he  showed  slight  interest.  He  felt  kindly  towards 
the  two  young  adventurers,  but  he  was  not  disposed  to 
carry  his  sentiments  into  the  newspaper  business.  They 
must  "make  good"  by  themselves,  like  any  other  Tom  and 
Gill,  and  Milly  married  to  an  impecunious  newspaper  artist 
would  not  be  a  social  asset  for  the  Star.  So  Milly,  happily, 
M  161 


162  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

was  relegated  to  domesticity,  and  the  management  of  her 
one  raw  little  maid.  Anyway,  as  she  told  Eleanor  Kemp,  her 
husband  did  not  care  to  have  his  wife  working  —  didn't  think 
much  of  women  in  the  newspaper  business.  She  was  proud 
of  his  Pride.  .  .  . 

The  new  home  was  a  pretty  little  nest.  Milly  had  rescued 
from  the  last  debacle  of  the  Ridge  household  those  few 
good  pieces  of  old  mahogany  that  had  been  her  mother's 
contribution  to  the  conglomerate,  and  kind  friends  had  added 
a  few  essential  articles.  Especially  Eleanor  Kemp,  with  a 
practical  eye  and  generous  hand,  had  taken  delight  in  seeing 
that  all  details  of  the  new  home  were  complete,  and  that 
everything  was  in  smiling  order  on  their  return  from  the  brief 
wedding  trip.  She  had  even  taken  pains  to  have  flowers  and 
plants  sent  hi  from  the  Como  greenhouses.  (The  plants 
speedily  died,  as  Milly  forgot  to  water  them.) 

So  now  they  were  embarked,  cosily  and  cheerily,  consider- 
ing their  circumstances.  As  a  shrewd  worldly  philosopher 
once  put  it  on  a  similar  occasion  :  "  Your  John  and  my  Amy 
got  launched  to-day  on  the  long  journey.  Poor  dears ! 
They  think  it's  to  be  one  long  picnic.  But  we  know  they  are 
up  against  the  Holy  State  of  Matrimony  —  a  very  different 
proposition.'1  By  which  he  meant,  no  doubt,  that  the  young 
couple  were  to  discover  that  instead  of  passion  and  sentiment, 
verses  and  kisses,  marriage  was  largely  a  matter  of  feeding 
John  and  keeping  him  smoothly  running  as  an  economic 
machine,  and  of  clothing  Milly  and  keeping  her  happily  at- 
tuned to  the  social  cosmos,  —  later  on  of  feeding,  clothing, 
educating,  and  properly  launching  the  little  Johns  and 
Millys  who  might  be  expected  to  put  in  an  appearance.  .  .  . 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  163 

But  our  lovers  had  not  struck  the  prosaic  bottom  yet, 
though  they  reached  it  sooner  than  either  had  expected. 
There  were  a  good  many  kisses  and  verses  the  first  months, 
passion  and  temperament.  John  discovered,  of  course,  that 
Mrs.  Bragdon  was  quite  a  different  woman  from  Milly 
Ridge,  —  a  still  fascinating,  though  occasionally  exasperating, 
creature,  while  Milly  thought  John  was  just  what  she  had 
known  he  would  be,  —  an  altogether  adorable  lover  and  per- 
fect man.  What  surprised  her  more  as  the  early  weeks  of 
marriage  slipped  by  was  to  find  that  she  herself  had  remained, 
in  spite  of  her  great  woman's  experience,  much  the  same 
person  she  had  always  been,  with  the  same  lively  interests 
in  people  and  things  outside  and  the  same  dislike  of  the  sordid 
side  of  existence.  She  had  vaguely  supposed  that  the  state 
of  love  ecstasy  which  had  been  aroused  in  her  would  continue 
forever,  excluding  all  other  elements  hi  her  being,  and  thus 
transform  her  into  something  gloriously  new.  Not  at  all. 
She  still  felt  aggrieved  when  the  maid  boiled  her  eggs  more 
than  two  minutes  or  passed  the  vegetables  on  the  wrong  side. 

When  the  two  first  seriously  faced  the  budget  question, 
they  found  that  they  had  started  their  sentimental  partner- 
ship with  a  combined  deficit  of  over  four  hundred  dollars. 
Luckily  Mrs.  Gilbert  had  sent  to  their  new  address  a  chilly 
note  of  good  wishes  and  a  crisp  cheque  for  one  hundred  dollars. 
It  was  rather  brutal  of  the  good  lady  to  put  them  so  quickly 
on  the  missionary  list,  and  Milly  wanted  to  return  the 
cheque;  but  John  laughed  and  "entered  it  to  the  good,"  as 
he  said.  Then  miraculously  Grandma  Ridge  had  put  into 
Milly's  hand  just  before  the  wedding  ten  fresh  ten-dollar  bills. 
Where  had  the  old  lady  concealed  such  wealth  all  these  barren 


164  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

years,  Milly  wondered !  .  .  .  And  finally,  among  other 
traces  of  Eleanor  Kemp's  fairy  hand,  they  found  in  a  drawer  of 
Milly's  new  desk  a  bank-book  on  Walter  Kemp's  bank  with 
a  bold  entry  of  $250  on  the  first  page.  So,  all  told,  they 
were  able  to  start  rather  to  the  windward,  as  Bragdon 
put  it.  Much  to  Milly's  surprise,  the  artist  proved  to 
have  a  sense  of  figures,  light  handed  as  he  had  shown  him- 
self before  marriage.  At  least  he  knew  the  difference  between 
the  debit  and  the  credit  side  of  the  ledger,  and  had  grasped 
the  fundamental  principle  of  domestic  finance,  viz.  one 
cannot  spend  more  than  one  earns,  long.  He  insisted  upon 
paying  up  all  the  old  bills  and  establishing  a  monthly  budget. 
When,  after  the  rent  had  been  deducted  from  the  sum  he 
expected  to  earn,  Milly  proved  to  him  that  they  could  not 
live  on  what  was  left,  he  whistled  and  said  he  must  "dig  it 
up  somehow,"  and  he  did.  He  became  indefatigably  indus- 
trious in  picking  up  odd  dollars,  extending  his  funny  column, 
doing  posters,  and  making  extra  sketches  for  the  sporting 
sheet.  In  spite  of  these  added  fives  and  tens,  they  usually 
exceeded  the  budget  by  a  third,  and  when  Jack  looked  grave, 
Milly  of  course  explained  just  how  exceptional  the  circum- 
stances had  been. 

It  is  not  worth  while  to  go  into  the  budgetary  details  of 
this  particular  matrimonial  venture.  Other  story-tellers 
have  done  that  with  painful  literalness,  and  nothing  is  drearier 
than  the  dead  accounts  of  the  butcher  and  baker,  necessary 
as  they  are.  The  essential  truths  of  domestic  finance  are 
very  simple,  and  invariable :  in  the  last  analysis  they  come 
to  one  horn  of  the  eternal  dilemma,  —  fewer  wants  or  more 
dollars.  In  America  it  is  usually  the  second  horn  of  the 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  165 

dilemma  that  the  husband  valiantly  embraces  —  it  seems  the 
easier  one  at  the  time,  at  least  the  more  comfortable  horn 
upon  which  to  be  impaled.  Milly  was  convinced  that  the 
first  horn  was  impossible,  if  they  were  to  "live  decently." 
Bragdon  began  to  think  they  might  do  better  in  New  York, 
where  the  market  for  incidental  art  was  larger  and  the  pay 
better.  Milly  was  eager  for  the  venture.  But  both  hesitated 
to  cut  themselves  off  from  a  sure,  if  lean,  subsistence.  The 
Star  raised  him  during  the  presidential  campaign,  when  he  was 
quite  happy  in  caricaturing  the  Democratic  ass  and  the  wide- 
mouthed  Democratic  candidate.  (They  always  had  a  tender 
feeling  for  the  gentleman  after  that !)  All  in  all,  he  made 
nearly  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  the  first  year,  and  that 
was  much  more  than  he  had  expected.  But  he  found  that 
even  in  those  years  of  low  prices  it  was  a  small  income  for 
two  —  as  Milly  pointed  out. 

However,  money  was  not  their  only  concern.  The  young 
wife  was  properly  ambitious  for  her  husband. 

"It  isn't  so  much  the  money,"  she  told  Eleanor  Kemp. 
"I  don't  want  Jack  to  sink  into  mere  newspaper  work,  though 
he's  awfully  clever  at  it.  But  it  leads  nowhere,  you  know. 
I  want  him  to  be  a  real  artist;  he's  got  the  talent.  And  if 
he  succeeds  as  a  painter,  it  pays  so  much  better.  Just  think  ! 
That  Varnot  man  charges  fifteen  hundred  dollars  for  his 
portraits  and  such  daubs  —  don't  you  think  so?" 

(Emil  Varnot  was  one  of  the  tribe  of  foreign  artists  who 
periodically  descend  upon  American  cities  and  reap  in  a  few 
months  a  rich  harvest  of  portraits,  if  they  are  properly 
introduced  —  much  to  the  disgust  of  local  talent.) 

"Don't  be  impatient,  Milly,"  Mrs.  Kemp  counselled.     "It 


166  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

will  come  in  time,  I've  no  doubt.  You  must  save  up  to  go 
abroad  first." 

But  the  dull  way  of  thrift  was  not  Milly's;  it  was  not 
American.  Improvements  there  are  financed  by  mortgage,  not 
by  savings.  They  must  borrow  to  make  the  next  step.  .  .  . 
Milly  had  lofty  ideals  of  helping  her  husband  in  his  work. 
She  was  to  be  his  inspiration  in  Art,  of  course :  that  was  to 
go  on  all  the  time.  More  practically  she  hoped  to  serve 
as  model  from  which  his  creations  would  issue  to  capture 
fame.  She  had  heard  of  artists  who  had  painted  themselves 
into  fame  through  their  wives'  figures,  and  she  longed  to 
emulate  the  wives.  But  this  illusion  was  shattered  during  the 
first  year  of  their  married  life.  When  Bragdon  essayed  a 
picture  in  the  slack  summer  season,  it  was  discovered  that 
Milly,  for  all  her  vivacious  good  looks,  was  not  paintable  in 
the  full  figure.  (They  had  tried  her  on  the  sands  behind 
the  flat,  where  they  rigged  up  an  impromptu  studio  out  of  old 
sails.)  Her  legs  were  too  short  between  the  thigh  and  the 
knee,  and  when  the  artist  tried  to  correct  this  defect  of  his 
model,  the  result  was  disastrous.  .  .  .  However,  what  was  of 
more  practical  purpose,  her  head  answered  very  well,  and 
Milly's  pretty  face  adorned  the  covers  of  various  minor 
magazines,  done  in  all  possible  color  schemes  at  twenty 
dollars  per  head.  "I  earn  something,"  she  said,  by  way 
of  self-consolation. 

She  had  another  disappointment.  She  had  imagined  that 
her  husband  would  do  most  of  his  work  at  home,  immediately 
under  her  fostering  eye,  and  that  in  this  way  she  should  have  a 
finger,  so  to  speak,  in  the  creative  process ;  but  for  the  present 
the  sort  of  "art"  they  lived  on  was  best  done  in  an  office, 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  167 

with  the  thud  of  steam  presses  beneath  and  the  eager  eye  of 
the  copy-reader  at  the  door.  So  Milly  was  left  to  herself 
for  long  hours  in  her  new  little  home,  and  Milly  was  lonely. 
The  trouble  obviously  was  that  Milly  had  not  enough  to  do 
to  occupy  her  abundant  energy  and  interest  in  life.  They 
were  not  to  have  children  if  possible :  in  the  modern  way  they 
had  settled  beforehand  that  that  was  impossible.  And 
modern  life  had  also  so  skilfully  contrived  the  plebeian  machin- 
ery of  living  that  there  was  little  or  nothing  left  for  the  woman 
to  do,  if  she  were  above  the  necessity  of  cooking  and  washing 
for  her  man.  Deliberately  to  set  herself  to  find  an  interesting 
and  inexpensive  occupation  for  her  idle  hours  was  not  in 
Milly's  nature,  —  few  women  of  her  class  did  in  those 
days.  It  was  supposed  to  be  enough  for  a  married  woman 
to  be  "the  head  of  her  house"  —  even  of  a  four-room  modern 
apartment  —  and  to  be  a  gracious  and  desirable  companion 
to  her  lord  in  his  free  hours  of  relaxation.  Anything  else 
was  altogether  " advanced"  and  " queer." 

So  after  the  first  egotistic  weeks  of  young  love,  the  social 
instinct  —  Milly's  dominant  passion,  in  which  her  husband 
shared  to  some  extent  —  awoke  with  a  renewed  keenness, 
and  she  looked  abroad  for  its  gratification.  Their  immediate 
neighbors,  she  quickly  decided,  were  "impossible"  as 
intimates  :  they  were  honest  young  couples,  clerks  and  minor 
employees,  who  had  come  to  the  outskirts  of  the  great  city, 
like  themselves,  for  the  sake  of  low  rents  and  clean  housing. 
There  were  no  signs  of  that  "artistic  and  Bohemian" 
quality  about  them  which  she  had  hoped  to  find  in  her  new 
life.  Her  husband  assured  her  that  he  had  failed  to  discover 
any  such  circle  in  Chicago,  any  at  least  whose  members  she 


168  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

could  endure.  That  was  where  America,  except  New  York 
possibly,  differed  from  Europe.  It  had  no  class  of  cultivated 
poor.  Occasionally  he  brought  a  newspaper  man  from  the 
city,  and  they  had  some  amusing  talk  over  their  dinner.  A 
few  of  Milly's  old  friends  persistently  followed  her  up,  like 
the  Norton  girls,  the  kindly  Mrs.  Lamereux,  and  the  Kemps. 
But  after  accepting  the  hospitality  of  these  far-off  friends, 
there  was  always  the  dreary  long  journey  back  to  their  flat, 
with  ample  time  for  sleepy  reflection  on  the  futility  of  trying 
to  keep  up  with  people  who  had  ten  times  your  means  of 
existence.  It  was  not  good  for  either  of  them,  they  knew, 
to  taste  surreptitiously  the  bourgeois  social  feast,  when  they 
were  not  able  "to  do  their  part."  Nevertheless,  as  the 
spring  came  on,  Milly  invited  people  more  and  more,  and  in 
the  long  summer  twilights  they  had  some  jolly  "beach 
parties"  on  the  sandy  lake  shore,  cooking  messes  over  a 
driftwood  fire,  and  also  moonlight  swimming  parties.  By 
such  means  the  dauntless  Milly  managed  to  keep  a  sense  of 
social  movement  about  them. 

She  saw  her  father  rarely.  It  was  a  day's  journey,  as  she 
expressed  it,  to  the  West  Side,  and  her  father  was  never  free 
until  after  six,  except  on  Sundays,  which  Milly  consecrated 
to  husband,  of  course.  Really,  father  and  daughter  were 
not  congenial,  and  they  discovered  it,  now  that  fate  had 
separated  them.  At  long  intervals  Horatio  would  come  to 
them  for  Sunday  dinner,  when  Milly  had  not  some  other  fes- 
tivity on  foot.  On  these  occasions  the  little  man  seemed 
subdued,  as  if  he  had  turned  down  the  hill  and  drearily  con- 
templated the  end,  at  the  bottom.  He  liked  best  to  sit 


ONE,  WOMAN'S  LIFE  169 

on  the  rear  porch,  read  the  Sunday  Star,  and  watch  the 
gleaming  lake.  Perhaps  it  reminded  him  of  that  vision  he 
had  indulged  himself  with  for  a  few  short  weeks  of  the  broad 
Pacific  beneath  the  Ventura  hills.  Milly  felt  sorry  for  her 
father  and  did  her  best  to  cheer  him  by  giving  him  a  bountiful 
dinner  of  the  sort  of  food  he  liked.  She  had  a  faint  sense  of 
guilt  towards  him,  as  if  she  might  have  done  more  to  make 
life  toothsome  for  him  in  his  old  age.  And  yet  how  could  she 
have  been  false  to  her  heart,  which  she  felt  had  been  amply 
vindicated  by  her  marriage  ?  Pity  that  her  heart  could  not 
have  chimed  to  another  note,  but  that  was  the  way  of  hearts. 
She  was  relieved  when  she  had  put  her  father  aboard  the 
car  on  his  return.  As  for  Jack,  he  was  always  kind  and  polite, 
but  frankly  bored ;  the  two  men  had  nothing  in  common  — 
how  could  they  ?  It  was  the  two  generations  over  again  — 
that  was  all. 

Old  Mrs.  Ridge  never  made  the  journey  to  the  Bragdon 
flat,  and  Milly  saw  her  only  once  or  twice  after  her  marriage. 
She  was  not  sorry.  Years  of  living  with  " Grandma"  had 
eaten  into  even  Milly's  amiable  soul.  The  little  old  lady 
grimly  pursued  her  narrow  path  between  the  boarding-house 
and  the  church,  reading  her  Christian  Vindicator  for  all 
mental  relaxation,  until  one  autumn  morning  she  was  found 
placidly  asleep  in  her  bed,  forever. 

That  was  the  next  event  of  importance  in  Milly 's  life. 


II 

A  TUNERAL  AND  A   SURPRISE 

WHEN  Horatio  telephoned  the  news,  Milly  hurried  over  to 
the  West  Side,  and  was  taken  to  her  grandmother's  room. 
The  little  old  lady  seemed  extraordinarily  lifelike  in  her  death 
—  perhaps  because  there  had  been  so  little  outward  animation 
to  her  life.  Her  thin,  veined  hands  were  folded  neatly  over 
her  decent  black  dress,  as  she  had  sat  so  many  hours,  per- 
fectly still.  The  neat  bands  of  white  hair  curved  around 
the  well-shaped  ears,  and  the  same  grim  smile  of  petty  irony 
that  Milly  knew  so  well  and  hated  was  graven  on  the  thin 
lips.  .  .  .  She  was  taken  to  that  cemetery  on  the  Western 
Boulevard  which  Milly  as  a  girl  had  prevented  her  from  visit- 
ing on  her  daily  walk.  There  were  several  old  ladies  from 
the  boarding-house  at  the  funeral,  and  one  other  thin-faced 
woman,  whom  Milly  vaguely  remembered  to  have  seen 
somewhere. 

Milly  returned  from  the  funeral  with  her  husband,  and  they 
were  both  silent  and  thoughtful,  occupied  not  so  much  with 
the  dead  as  with  the  future  her  going  must  disturb.  They 
had  not  dared  voice  to  each  other  the  idea  that  had  been 
troubling  them  both  since  the  first  news  of  Mrs.  Ridge's 
death  had  reached  them.  At  last,  when  they  had  left  the 
car  and  were  approaching  their  own  home,  Bragdon  said,  — 
"I  suppose,  Milly,  we  ought  to  have  your  father  live  with  us." 

170 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  171 

"I  suppose  so,"  Milly  sighed.  "Poor  papa  —  he  feels  it 
dreadfully.  .  .  .  He's  done  so  much  for  me  always,  Jack." 

Her  husband  might  rejoin  that  Horatio  had  done  little  for 
him,  but  he  said  instead,  — 

"We  shall  have  to  find  a  larger  apartment." 

Milly  sighed.  It  was  difficult  enough  to  get  on  in  the 
little  one. 

"  You'll  go  over  to-morrow  to  see  him  about  it  ?  "  Bragdon 
continued  courageously. 

"Father  can't  come  'way  out  here  to  live  —  it's  too  far 
from  his  business." 

"We'll  have  to  move  nearer  the  business  then." 

"Not  to  the  West  Side !"  Milly  exclaimed  in  horror. 

"What  difference  does  it  make?"  her  husband  asked,  as 
he  wearily  took  up  his  drawing-board. 

"You  don't  know  the  West  Side,"  Milly  muttered. 

"Well,  we  can't  leave  him  alone  in  that  boarding-house, 
can  we?" 

That  was  exactly  what  Milly  would  have  liked  to  do,  but 
she  had  not  the  courage  to  say  so  in  the  face  of  her  husband's 
ready  acceptance  of  the  burden.  The  next  day,  as  she 
revolved  the  unpleasant  situation  on  her  way  to  see  her 
father,  she  said  to  herself  again  and  again,  —  "Not  the  West 
Side.  I  won't  have  that  —  anything  but  that!"  For  to 
return  to  the  West  Side  seemed  like  beginning  life  all  over 
again  at  the  very  bottom  of  the  hill. 

When  Milly  announced  her  invitation  to  her  father, 
Horatio  exhibited  a  strange  diffidence. 

"We'll  find  some  nice  little  apartment  nearer  the  city 


172  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

where  you'll  have  no  trouble  in  getting  to  your  business," 
Milly  said  in  kindly  fashion. 

"I  guess  not,"  Horatio  replied.  "Not  but  that  it's  real 
kind  of  you  and  John." 

"Why  not?" 

"Well,  you  see,  daughter,  your  husband  ain't  my  kind," 
he  stammered.  "He's  all  right  —  a  good  fellow,  and  he 
seems  to  make  you  happy  —  but  I  don't  much  believe  in 
mixing  up  families." 

"What  will  you  do?" 

And  after  further  embarrassment,  Horatio  confessed  with 
a  red  face,  — 

"Perhaps  I'll  get  married  myself  soon." 

"Papa  —  you  don't  mean  it!"  Milly  exclaimed,  rather 
shocked,  and  inclined  to  think  it  was  one  of  Horatio's  raw 
jokes. 

"Why  not?  ...  I  ain't  as  old  as  some,  if  I'm  not  as 
young  as  others." 

"Who  is  the  lady?" 

"A  fine  young  woman  !  .  .  .  I've  known  her  well  for  years, 
and  I  can  tell  you  she'll  make  the  right  sort  of  wife  for  any 
man." 

"Who  can  it  be?"  demanded  Milly,  now  quite  excited,  and 
running  over  in  her  mind  all  of  her  father's  female  acquaint- 
ance, which  was  not  extensive. 

"Miss  Simpson,"  Horatio  said.  "Expect  you  don't 
remember  Josephine  Simpson  —  she  was  the  young  woman 
who  was  in  the  office  when  I  had  the  coffee  business." 

"That  woman !"  Milly  gasped,  remembering  vividly  now 
the  sour,  keen  scrutiny  the  bookkeeper  had  given  her  the  last 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  173 

time  she  had  been  in  the  office  of  the  tea  and  coffee  business. 
It  must  have  been  Miss  Simpson  who  had  stood  a  little  to  one 
side  behind  her  father  at  the  funeral.  The  thin-faced  woman 
had  a  familiar  look,  but  hi  her  best  clothes  Milly  had  not 
recognized  her. 

Horatio  resented  the  tone  of  his  daughter's  exclamation. 

"Let  me  tell  you,  Milly/'  he  asserted  with  dignity,  "there 
are  few  better  women  living  on  this  earth  than  'that  woman.' 
She's  looked  after  a  sick  mother  and  a  younger  sister  all  her 
life,  and  now  I  mean  she  shall  have  somebody  look  after  her." 

The  little  man  rose  an  inch  bodily  with  his  intention. 

"I  think  it's  very  nice  of  you,  papa." 

"Nice  of  me!  An  old  hulks  like  me?  ...  I  guess  it's 
nice  of  her  to  let  me.  .  .  .  We'll  make  out  all  right.  Will 
you  come  to  the  wedding?"  he  concluded  with  a  laugh. 

"Of  course  —  and  I'm  so  glad  for  you,  really  glad,  papa. 
I  hope  Josephine' 11  make  you  very  happy." 

And  she  kissed  her  father. 

On  her  way  back  to  the  city  Milly  laughed  aloud  several 
times  with  amusement  mingled  with  relief.  "Who  would  have 
thought  it  —  and  with  such  a  scarecrow  !"  She  stopped  at 
the  Star  to  tell  Jack  the  news.  They  had  lunch  together 
and  laughed  again  and  again  at  "love's  young  dream." 

"He  won't  be  lonely  now  !"  Milly  said. 

"I  suppose  he  had  to  have  some  woman  attached  to  him," 
her  husband  mused ;  "when  a  man  has  reached  his  age  and 
has  had  'em  about  always  — " 

"Well,  I  like  that !"  Milly  pouted. 

"Anyway,  that  let's  us  out,"  was  the  final  comment  of 
both  upon  the  approaching  nuptials  of  Horatio. 


174  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

It  was  not  the  only  surprise  that  the  little  old  lady's  death 
provided  the  young  couple  with.  It  was  discovered  that  she 
had  made  a  will,  and,  what  was  still  more  wonderful,  that  she 
had  really  something  to  will !  Various  savings-bank  books 
were  found  neatly  tied  up  with  string  in  her  drawer  below  a 
pile  of  handkerchiefs.  The  will  said,  after  duly  providing 
for  the  care  of  her  grave,  "To  my  beloved  granddaughter,  I 
give  and  bequeath  the  residue  of  my  estate,"  which  upon 
examination  of  the  bank-books  was  found  to  be  rather  more 
than  three  thousand  dollars  all  told. 

"  To  me  ! ! "  Milly  almost  shouted  when  her  father  read  the 
slip  of  paper  to  her.  She  was  divided  in  her  astonishment 
between  surprise  that  there  should  be  any  money  left,  and 
that  the  little  old  lady,  who  had  fought  her  all  her  life,  should 
give  it  all  to  "her  beloved  granddaughter." 

Bragdon  could  not  appreciate  the  full  irony  of  the  situation. 

"And  why  not  to  you?"  he  asked. 

"You  don't  know  grandma!"  Milly  replied  oracularly, 
feeling  that  any  attempt  to  explain  would  be  useless.  —  And, 
it  may  be  added,  Milly  did  not  know  her  grandmother, 
either.  She  could  no  more  appreciate  the  steady,  stern 
self-denial  that  had  gone  to  the  gathering  of  that  three 
thousand  dollars  than  she  could  the  nature  of  a  person  who 
would  nag  for  twenty  years  the  girl  she  meant  to  endow. 
That  also  belonged  among  the  puritan  traits,  as  well  as  a 
sneaking  admiration  for  the  handsome,  self-willed,  extrava- 
gant granddaughter. 

"She  ought  to  have  left  it  to  you,"  Milly  said  to  her  father. 

"I  guess  she  thought  she  had  done  enough  for  me  already," 
Horatio  said  lightly.  "She  knew  about  Josephine,  too  — 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  175 

expect  she  thought  the  green  parlor  furniture  would  be  the 
right  thing  for  us.     Josephine's  likely  to  appreciate  that 
more'n  you,  Milly!" 
Milly  was  amply  content  with  this  division. 

Husband  and  wife  lay  awake  for  long  hours  that  night,  in  a 
flutter  of  excitement,  discussing  Milly's  marvellous  windfall. 

"Just  think,"  Milly  cried,  snuggling  very  close  to  her  hus- 
band. "We'll  go  abroad  as  soon  as  we  can  pack  up,  shan't 
we  ?  And  you  will  paint !  And  all  thanks  to  poor  old 
grandma." 

"It  is  luck,"  the  artist  agreed  thankfully. 

"And  I  brought  it  to  you  —  poor  little  me,  without  a  sou ! 
.  .  .  Three  thousand  ought  to  last  a  long  time." 

(Milly  was  invariably  optimistic  about  the  expansibility 
of  money.) 

"It'll  be  a  good  starter,  anyway,"  her  husband  agreed, 
"and  before  it's  gone  I  ought  to  be  making  good." 

So  that  night  two  very  happy  married  people  went  to 
sleep  in  each  other's  arms  to  dream  of  a  wonderful  future. 


Ill 

ON   BOARD   SHIP 

AT  last  Milly  was  tucked  up  in  a  steamer  chair  beside  her 
artist  husband,  on  board  the  old  Augusta  Victoria,  bound  for 
Europe,  that  exhaustless  haven  of  romance  where  with  or 
without  an  excuse  all  good  Americans  betake  themselves 
when  they  can.  .  .  . 

The  last  few  weeks  had  been  exciting  ones.  It  had  begun 
with  Horatio's  wedding  to  the  homely  bookkeeper,  which 
Milly  dutifully  attended  with  her  husband.  In  spite  of  the 
very  handsome  rug  that  they  had  sent  the  couple,  Mrs. 
Horatio  preserved  a  cold  demeanor  towards  her  husband's 
daughter,  as  if  she  still  suspected  the  young  woman  of  de- 
signs upon  Horatio  and  had  married  him  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  protecting  him  for  the  future  from  this  rapacious  creature. 
Milly,  quickly  perceiving  the  situation,  mischievously  re- 
doubled her  demonstration  over  poor  Horatio,  who  was  vis- 
ibly torn  between  his  loyalties. 

"Lord,  what  a  sour  face  she  has  !"  Milly  commented  to 
her  husband,  when  they  had  left  the  bride  and  groom.  "  Poor 
old  Dad,  I  hope  she'll  let  him  smoke  !  .  .  .  Why  do  you 
suppose  he  married  her?" 

"To  have  some  one  to  work  for,"  Bragdon,  who  was  not 
without  a  sense  of  humor,  suggested. 

"He  might  at  least  have  found  somebody  better  looking." 

"She  looks  capable,  at  any  rate." 

176 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  177 

Milly  made  a  face.  She  did  not  like  this  appreciation  of 
another  woman's  capability  by  her  husband.  .  .  * 

Then  came  the  farewell  visits  of  old  friends,  who  all  wished 
the  two  venturers  great  good  luck  and  sadly  prophesied 
they  would  never  return  to  the  city  by  the  lake.  Milly  was 
tearful  over  their  departure,  but  a  delirious  week  in  New 
York  that  followed  did  much  to  efface  this  sentimental  grief. 
Jack  kept  finding  old  friends  at  every  corner,  who  welcomed 
him  "back  to  civilization"  uproariously,  and  Milly  felt  fairly 
launched  on  her  new  career  already.  A  very  good-natured 
Big  Brother-in-law  took  them  to  Sherry's  for  dinner,  and, 
charmed  by  his  new  sister,  spontaneously  offered  to  increase 
their  small  hoard  by  another  thousand,  with  the  promise  of 
still  more  help,  in  case  their  "stake"  ran  out  before  the  two 
years  of  Europe  they  planned  had  brought  results.  Finally 
an  old  college  acquaintance  of  Jack's,  who  had  made  his  de*but 
in  literature  successfully  and  was  engaged  to  provide  a 
woman's  magazine  with  one  of  his  tender  stories  with  a 
pronounced  "heart  interest,"  promised  to  secure  the  illus- 
trations for  Bragdon.  "If  I  can  catch  on,"  the  artist  told 
his  wife,  "it  means  —  anything.  Clive  Reinhard  turns  out 
one  of  his  sloppy  stories  every  six  months,  and  they  are  all 
illustrated." 

Altogether  when  they  set  sail  they  calculated  their  re- 
sources, if  carefully  managed,  could  be  made  to  last  three 
years.  Three  years  of  Europe !  .  .  .  Milly  had  never 
looked  so  far  ahead  in  all  her  life. 

Milly,  snugly  tucked  up  on  the  leeward  side  of  the  deck, 
closed  her  eyes  as  the  boat  rolled  with  heavy  dignity,  and 


178  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

thought.  To  be  perfectly  frank  her  married  life  in  the  four- 
room  flat  on  the  outskirts  of  Chicago  had  begun  to  pall  on  her. 
It  seemed  to  lead  nowhere.  It  had  not  been  very  different 
from  the  lives  of  the  little  people  about  her,  from  what  she 
would  have  done  and  been  if  she  had  married  Ted  Donovan, 
say.  Only,  of  course,  Jack  was  different  from  Ted,  and  with 
him  it  could  not  last  in  the  commonplace  rut.  They  were 
merely  little  people,  and  very  poor  little  people,  in  the  big 
whirl  of  the  western  city  —  with  their  hope.  Suddenly  in 
the  most  romantic  manner  the  Hope  had  taken  shape  — 
and  Milly,  thanks  to  grandma's  surprising  gift,  arrogated  to 
herself  the  whole  credit  of  that.  She  did  not  pause  to  think 
what  might  have  happened  to  them  if  they  had  been  obliged 
to  continue  in  the  rut.  She  did  not  realize  that  already 
"love  was  not  enough." 

But  now  heigho  for  Venture  and  the  New  Life  —  the  life 
of  Art !  Milly  still  thought  vaguely  that  according  to  Mrs. 
Lamereux  it  would  mean  meeting  a  lot  of  interesting  people, 
endless  clever  talk  over  delightful  meals  in  queer  little  French 
restaurants  or  in  picturesque  and  fascinating  studios.  "  Art " 
was  the  next  thing  to  money  or  fashion.  If  one  couldn't 
be  awfully  rich  or  a  "social  leader,"  the  best  thing  was  to 
be  artistic  and  distinguished,  which  brought  you  into  con- 
tact with  all  sorts  of  people,  among  them  "the  fashionables," 
of  course.  She  meant  that  her  husband  should  be  a  success- 
ful painter,  not  a  mere  illustrator. 

Of  the  real  nature  of  Art  and  the  artist's  life  Milly  had  no 
better  conception  than  when  she  first  fell  in  love  with  Jack 
Bragdon.  She  knew  nothing  of  the  artist's  despairs  and 
triumphs,  his  tireless  labor  to  grasp  the  unseen,  his  rare  and 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  179 

exalted  joys,  his  strange  valuation  of  life,  —  in  short  the 
blind,  unconscious  purpose  of  Art  in  the  terrestial  scheme  of 
things.  Nor  perhaps  did  John  Bragdon  at  twenty-eight. 
The  crust  of  bourgeois  standards  is  so  thick  in  American  life 
that  it  takes  a  rare  and  powerful  nature  to  break  through, 
and  Bragdon  had  not  yet  begun  to  knock  his  way.  .  .  . 
Milly's  idea  of  Art,  like  most  women's,  was  Decoration  and 
Excitement.  When  successful,  it  made  money  and  noise  in 
the  world,  and  brought  social  rewards,  naturally.  She 
hadn't  married  Jack  for  that,  or  for  any  reason  except  because 
of  his  own  adorable  personality,  as  she  told  him  frequently. 
But  now  that  she  was  married  she  meant  to  make  the  most 
of  the  Gift.  Jack  was  to  be  a  Creator,  and  she  aspired  to  be 
embodied  somehow  in  the  creation  and  share  its  profits. 

At  last  they  were  launched :  their  marriage  was  really  just 
beginning.  .  .  .  She  snuggled  closer  to  her  husband  under 
the  common  rug  and  murmured  in  his  sleepy  ear,  — 

"Isn't  it  great,  Jack?" 

"What?"     (Drowsily.) 

"Europe!  Everything!  .  .  .  That  we're  really  here  on 
the  steamer !" 

"Urn!" 

"And  you're  going  to  be  a  great  painter  — " 

"Perhaps."     (Dubiously.) 

"What  shall  you  do  first?" 

"Don't  know  —  find  a  cab." 

"Silly!  .  .  .  Don't  make  fun  of  me.  .  .  .  Kiss  me!  .  .  . 
Do  you  mind,  dear,  going  down  into  the  cabin  and  looking 
for  my  hot-water  bottle,"  etc. 

Bragdon  recovered  first  from  the  Atlantic  languor,  and  in 


180  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

the  course  of  his  rambles  about  the  ship  discovered  an  ac- 
quaintance in  the  second  cabin,  —  a  young  instructor  in 
architecture  at  a  technical  school,  who  with  his  wife  and 
small  child  were  also  on  their  way  to  Paris  for  the  winter. 
He  brought  Milly  to  see  the  Reddons  where  they  were  es- 
tablished behind  a  ventilator  on  the  rear  deck.  Milly 
thought  they  seemed  forlorn  and  pitied  them.  Mrs.  Red- 
don  was  a  little  pale  New  Englander,  apparently  as  fragile 
as  a  china  cup,  and  in  her  arms  was  a  mussy  and  peevish 
child.  She  confided  to  Milly  that  she  expected  another 
child,  and  Milly,  whose  one  ever  present  terror  was  the  fear 
of  becoming  inconveniently  a  mother,  was  quite  horrified. 

"How  can  they  do  it !"  she  exclaimed  to  Jack,  when  they 
had  returned  to  their  more  spacious  quarters.  "Go  over 
second-class  like  that  —  it's  so  dirty  and  smelly  and  such 
common  people  all  around  one." 

"I  suppose  Reddon  can't  afford  anything  better." 

"Then  I  should  stay  at  home  until  I  could.  With  a  baby, 
too,  and  another  one  coming:  it's  like  the  emigrants!" 

"Reddon  is  a  clever  chap  :  he's  been  over  before,  a  couple 
of  years  at  the  Beaux  Arts.  I  suppose  he  wants  more  work 
and  didn't  like  to  leave  her  behind." 

"She  shouldn't  have  babies,  then,"  Milly  pronounced 
seriously,  feeling  her  superiority  in  not  thus  handicapping 
her  husband  in  his  career. 

"It  is  tough,"  Bragdon  admitted.  .  .  . 

They  saw  a  good  deal  of  the  Reddons  during  the  voyage. 
They  proved  to  be  not  in  the  least  down-hearted  over  their 
lot,  and  quite  unaware  of  Milly's  commiseration.  They 
were  going  to  Paris  for  some  desirable  professional  work,  as 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  181 

they  might  go  to  San  Francisco  or  Hong  Kong,  had  the  path 
pointed  that  way.  They  had  babies  because  that  was  part 
of  the  game  when  one  married,  and  they  brought  them  along 
because  there  was  nothing  else  to  do  with  them.  It  was  all 
very  simple  from  the  Reddon  point  of  view. 

Milly  considered  Mrs.  Reddon  to  be  a  "nice  little  thing," 
and  they  became  chummy.  Marion  Reddon  was  a  college- 
trained  woman,  with  much  more  real  culture  than  her  hus- 
band or  either  of  the  Bragdons.  She  had  read  her  Greek  and 
Latin  and  forgotten  them,  liked  pictures  and  music  and 
books,  but  preferred  babies  when  they  came.  Sam  Reddon 
was  a  high-spirited  American  boy.  He  had  never  meant  to 
study  architecture  and  he  hadn't  intended  to  marry  or  to 
teach;  but  having  done  all  these  things  he  still  found  the 
world  a  merry  place  enough.  He  played  the  piano  a  little 
and  sang  Italian  songs  in  an  odd  falsetto  and  roamed  over 
the  ship  in  disreputable  corduroys,  which  he  had  preserved 
from  his  student  days  in  Paris,  making  himself  thoroughly 
at  home  in  all  three  cabins. 

They  talked  Paris,  of  course,  about  which  Reddon  knew  a 
great  deal  more  than  any  of  the  others. 

"Where  are  you  going  to  live?    In  the  Quarter?" 

Mrs.  Kemp  had  given  Milly  the  address  of  an  excellent 
pension  near  the  Arc,  at  which  Sam  Reddon  expressed  a 
frank  disgust. 

"Americans  and  English  —  the  rotten  bourgeoisie  —  why 
don't  you  stay  in  New  York?"  He  figuratively  spat  upon 
the  proprieties,  and  Milly  was  bewildered.  "An  aparte- 
ment  meublee  au  cinquieme,  near  the  BouV  'Mich  for  us,  eh, 
missus  ?  " 


182  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Milly  had  heard  that  the  " Latin  Quarter"  was  dirty,  and 
not  "nice."  None  of  her  Chicago  friends  ever  stayed  there. 

"You'll  come  and  call  on  us,  won't  you?"  the  young  man 
said  with  pleasant  mockery.  "Nobody  will  know,  but  we 
won't  lay  it  up  against  you  if  you  don't." 

Milly  thought  he  was  "fresh"  and  tried  to  snub  him,  but 
her  manner  only  provoked  Reddon  the  more. 

"What's  your  husband  trying  to  paint  for?  There  are 
two  thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  other  chaps  like 
him  in  Paris,  and  he'll  just  be  the  three  thousandth,  who 
thinks  he's  going  to  make  his  fortune  painting  rich  people's 
portraits.  I'd  rather  break  stone  than  try  to  live  by  paint." 

"And  how  about  building  summer  villas  for  a  living?" 
Bragdon  queried. 

"Well,"  the  young  man  replied  with  a  grin.  "You  see  I 
don't  —  I  can't  get  any  to  do!" 

It  was  pleasant  enough  to  joke  about  the  arts,  but  Milly 
didn't  expect  to  see  much  of  the  Reddons  once  they  were 
launched  in  the  fascinating  life  of  Paris.  She  was  becoming 
a  little  bored  with  them  already,  with  their  sloppy  uncon- 
ventionality  and  with  ship  life  in  general.  Most  of  the  first- 
cabin  passengers,  she  discovered,  were  from  Chilicothe,  Ohio, 
or  similar  metropoli  of  the  middle  west,  and  as  ignorant  as 
she  of  what  was  before  them. 

But  when  they  sighted  the  green  shores  of  Normandy,  her 
enthusiasm  revived  at  a  bound.  As  they  came  into  the 
harbor,  the  gray  stone  houses  with  high-pitched  red  roofs, 
the  fishing  smacks  with  their  dun-colored  sails,  even  the  blue- 
coated  men  on  the  waiting  tender  had  about  them  the  charm 
of  another  world.  They  were  different  and  strange,  exciting 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  183 

to  the  thirsty  soul  of  the  American,  so  long  sodden  with  the 
ugly  monotony  of  a  pioneer  civilization.  From  the  moment 
that  the  fat  little  tender  touched  the  steamer,  amid  a  babble 
of  tongues,  Milly  was  breathless  with  excitement.  She 
squeezed  her  husband's  arm,  like  an  ecstatic  child  who  had 
at  last  got  what  it  wanted.  "I'm  so  happy,"  she  chirped. 
"Isn't  it  all  wonderful,  — that  we  are  really  here,  you  and 
I?" 

He  laughed  in  superior  male  fashion  at  her  enthusiasm,  and 
stroked  his  small  mustache,  but  in  his  own  way  he  was 
excited  at  sight  of  the  promised  land. 

"Hang  on  tight,"  he  said  to  her,  as  they  began  the  ticklish 
descent  to  the  tender,  "or  it  will  be  still  more  wonderful." 

Milly  tripped  over  the  long,  unsteady  gangway  towards 
the  Future,  the  great  adventure  of  her  life.  There  beyond, 
in  the  smiling  green  country  with  the  old  gray  houses,  lay 
mysterious  satisfactions  that  she  had  hungered  for  all  her 
life,  —  Experiences,  Fame,  and  Fortune  —  in  a  word  her 
Happiness. 


IV 

BEING  AN  ARTIST'S  WIFE 

BUT  it  wasn't  so  different  after  all ! 

As  Sam  Reddon  had  predicted,  the  Bragdons  went  to  live 
in  the  Etoile  quarter,  —  in  a  very  respectable  hotel-pension 
on  the  Rue  Galilee.  It  was  so  much  healthier  in  that  quar- 
ter, every  one  said,  more  comfortable  for  a  wife,  who  must 
be  left  to  herself  for  long  hours  each  day.  They  had  lost 
sight  of  the  Reddons  from  the  moment  they  entered  the 
Paris  train,  for  the  Reddons,  having  second-class  tickets, 
were  forced  to  wait  for  a  slower  train,  which  they  didn't 
seem  to  mind  as  it  gave  them  a  chance  to  see  the  little  town 
and  lunch  in  a  cabaret  instead  of  paying  for  an  expensive 
meal  on  the  wagon-restaurant  as  the  Bragdons  did. 

Bragdon  enrolled  himself  among  the  seventy  or  eighty 
students  at  Julian's  and  also  shared  a  studio  near  the  Pont 
des  Invalides  with  another  American,  where  he  worked  after- 
noons by  himself.  He  plunged  into  his  painting  very  ear- 
nestly, realizing  all  that  he  had  to  accomplish.  But  he  lived 
the  life  of  the  alien  in  France,  as  so  many  of  his  fellow^tu- 
dents  did,  preserving  a  stout  Americanism  in  the  midst  of 
Paris.  Thanks  to  an  education  in  an  American  college, 
after  eight  years'  study  of  foreign  languages  he  could  read 
easy  French,  but  he  could  scarcely  order  a  meal  in  the  lan- 
guage. And  he  did  not  try  to  learn  French,  like  most  of 

184 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  185 

the  young  Americans  ''studying"  in  Paris.  What  was  the 
use  ?  he  said.  He  did  not  intend  to  live  his  life  there.  In 
truth,  he  disdained  the  French,  like  the  others,  and  all 
things  French,  including  most  of  their  art.  His  marriage 
had  emphasized  this  Americanism.  Like  most  of  his  coun- 
trymen he  regarded  every  Frenchman  as  a  would-be  seducer 
of  his  neighbor's  wife,  and  every  Frenchwoman  as  a  possi- 
ble wanton ;  all  things  French  as  either  corrupt  or  frivolous 
or  hopelessly  behind  the  times. 

He  inspired  Milly  to  some  extent  with  these  ideas,  though 
she  was  of  a  more  curious  and  trusting  nature.  He  did  not 
like  to  have  her  go  out  in  Paris  even  in  the  daytime  unac- 
companied, and  as  after  the  first  weeks  of  settlement  in  their 
new  environment  he  was  very  busy  all  day,  Milly  found 
herself  more  or  less  secluded  and  idle  from  nine  in  the  morn- 
ing until  five  in  the  afternoon.  It  was  worse  than  in  the 
flat  in  Chicago  !  For  there  she  could  go  out  when  she 
pleased,  and  had  some  social  distraction.  Here  they  knew 
almost  nobody. 

The  hotel-pension  on  the  Rue  Galile*e  was  frequented  by 
the  quieter  sort  of  middle-aged  English,  and  a  few  American 
mothers  with  their  children,  "  doing  Europe."  Hardly  a 
word  of  French  was  spoken  within  its  doors,  and  as  far  as 
possible  the  English  habitues  of  the  place  had  anglicized  its 
food.  Milly  found  few  congenial  spirits  there.  She  rather 
liked  two  invalidish  maiden  ladies  from  Boston  and  went 
shopping  with  them  sometimes  and  to  see  the  pictures  in 
the  Louvre.  But  the  Misses  Byron  were  quite  delicate  and 
took  their  Paris  in  dainty  sips. 

Milly  was  far  from  sharing  her  husband's  distrust  of  all 


186  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

things  French,  but  she  supposed  being  a  man  and  having 
been  there  before  he  must  know  Paris.  She  would  have 
liked  to  spend  the  lovely  late  autumn  days  on  the  streets, 
drinking  in  the  sights  and  sounds.  Instead  she  went  with 
Jack  to  the  picture  galleries  and  did  the  other  " monuments" 
starred  in  Baedeker,  conscientiously.  But  these  did  not  stir 
her  soul.  The  Louvre  was  like  some  thronged  wilderness 
and  she  had  no  clews.  Life  spoke  to  her  almost  exclusively 
through  her  senses,  not  through  her  mind,  which  was  totally 
untrained.  She  was  profoundly  ignorant  of  all  history,  art, 
and  politics;  so  the  "monuments"  meant  nothing  but  their 
picturesqueness.  She  picked  up  the  language  with  ex- 
traordinary avidity,  and  soon  became  her  husband's  inter- 
preter, when  the  necessity  reached  beyond  a  commonplace 
phrase. 

Occasionally  as  a  spree  they  dined  in  the  city  at  some  rec- 
ommended restaurant  and  went  to  the  theatre.  But  these 
were  expensive  pleasures  —  indeed  the  scale  of  living  was 
more  costly  than  in  Chicago,  if  one  wanted  the  same  com- 
forts; and  by  the  end  of  the  first  winter  Bragdon  became 
worried  over  the  rapid  inroads  they  were  making  on  their 
letter  of  credit.  Every  time  he  had  to  journey  to  the  Rue 
Scribe  he  shook  his  head  and  warned  Milly  they  must  be  more 
careful  if  their  funds  were  to  last  them  even  two  years.  And  he 
knew  now  that  he  needed  every  day  of  training  he  could 
possibly  get.  He  was  behind  many  of  these  other  three 
thousand  young  Americans  engaged  in  becoming  great  ar- 
tists. Milly  thought  their  sprees  were  modest  and  far  be- 
tween, but  as  the  dark,  chilly  Paris  winter  drew  on  she  was 
more  and  more  confined  to  the  stuffy  salon  or  their  one  cheer- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  187 

less  room.  She  became  depressed  and  bored.  This  was  not 
at  all  what  she  had  expected  of  Europe.  It  seemed  that 
Paris  could  be  as  small  a  place  as  Chicago,  or  even  less  ! 

Sometimes,  like  a  naughty  child,  Milly  broke  rules  and 
sallied  forth  by  herself  on  bright  days,  wandering  down  the 
Champs  Elyse*es,  gazing  at  the  people,  speculating  upon  the 
very  pronounced  ladies  in  the  smart  victorias,  even  getting 
as  far  as  the  crowded  boulevards  and  the  beguiling  shops, 
which  she  did  not  dare  to  enter  for  fear  she  should  yield  to 
temptation.  Once  she  had  a  venture  that  was  exciting.  She 
was  followed  all  the  way  from  the  Rue  Royale  to  the  Rue 
Galilee  by  a  man,  who  tried  to  speak  to  her  as  she  neared  the 
pension,  so  that  she  fairly  ran  to  shelter.  She  decided  not 
to  tell  Jack  of  her  little  adventure,  for  he  would  be  severe 
with  her  and  have  his  prejudices  confirmed.  She  rather 
enjoyed  the  excitement  of  it  all,  and  wouldn't  have  minded 
repeating  it,  if  she  could  be  sure  of  escaping  in  the  end  with- 
out trouble.  .  .  . 

She  read  some  books  which  her  husband  got  for  her,  — 
those  breakfast-food  culture  books  provided  for  just  such 
people,  about  cities  and  monuments  and  history.  She  was 
supposed  to  "read  up"  about  Rome  and  Florence,  where 
they  hoped  to  go  in  the  spring.  But  books  tired  Milly  very 
soon :  the  unfamiliar  names  and  places  meant  nothing  at  all 
to  her.  She  decided  that,  as  in  most  cases,  one  had  to  have 
money  and  plenty  of  it  to  enjoy  Europe,  —  to  travel  and 
live  at  the  gay  hotels,  to  buy  things  and  get  experiences 
"  first  hand."  Evidently  it  was  not  for  her,  at  present. 

What  she  liked  best  in  her  life  this  first  winter  were  the 
Sunday  excursions  they  made  to  Fontainebleau,  St.  Germain, 


188  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

Versailles,  and  St.  Cloud,  and  other  smaller  places  where 
the  people  went.  She  liked  the  mixed  crowds  of  chattering 
French  on  the  river  boats  and  the  third-class  trains,  — 
loved  to  talk  with  the  women  and  children  in  her  careless 
French,  and  watch  their  foreign  domesticities.  .  .  .  Best 
of  all,  perhaps,  were  the  walks  in  the  Bois  with  her  husband, 
where  she  could  see  the  animation  of  the  richer  world.  On 
their  way  back  they  would  often  stop  at  Gage's  for  cakes 
and  mild  drinks.  All  the  pastry-shops  fascinated  Milly, 
they  were  so  bright  and  clean  and  chic.  The  efficiency  of 
French  civilization  was  summed  up  to  her  in  the  patisserie. 
She  liked  sweet  things  and  almost  made  herself  ill  with  the 
delectable  concoctions  at  Gage's.  That  more  than  any- 
thing else  this  first  year  came  to  typify  to  her  Paris,  —  the 
people,  men  as  well  as  women,  who  came  in  for  their  cakes 
or  syrop,  the  eagle-eyed  Madame  perched  high  at  the  comp- 
toir,  holding  the  entire  business  in  her  competent  hand,  and 
all  the  deft  girls  in  their  black  dresses,  nimbly  serving,  "Oui, 
Madame!  Void,  Monsieur !  Que  desirez-vousf "  etc.  She 
admired  the  neat  glass  trays  of  tempting  sweets,  the  round 
jars  of  bonbons,  the  colored  liqueurs,  the  neat  little  marble- 
topped  tables.  Apparently  the  patisserie  was  a  popular 
institution,  for  people  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  flocked  there 
like  flies. 

"If  you  ever  die  and  I  have  to  earn  my  living,"  she  would 
say  jokingly  to  her  husband,  "I  know  what  I  should  do.  I'd 
run  a  cake-shop  !" 

" You'd  eat  all  the  cakes  yourself,"  Bragdon  rejoined, 
tearing  her  away  after  the  eighth  or  tenth. 

She  went  there  by  herself  sometimes,  and  became  good 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  189 

friends  with  the  reigning  Madame,  from  whom  she  learned 
the  routine  of  the  manufacture  and  the  sales,  as  well  as  the 
trials  and  tribulations  with  les  desmoiselles  that  the  manager 
of  a  popular  pastry  shop  must  have.  This  Madame  liked 
the  pretty,  sociable  Americaine,  always  smiled  when  she 
entered  the  shop  with  her  husband,  counselled  her  as  to 
the  choicest  dainties  of  the  day,  asked  her  opinion  deferen- 
tially as  that  of  a  connoisseur,  and  made  her  little  gifts. 
Through  the  cake-shop  Milly  came  to  realize  the  French, 
as  her  husband  never  did. 

So  the  winter  wore  away  somehow,  —  the  period  that 
Milly  remembered  as,  on  the  whole,  the  dullest  part  of  her 
married  life.  Her  first  season  in  Paris  !  They  might  read 
a  little  in  one  of  the  culture  books  in  their  room  after  dinner, 
then  would  take  refuge  from  the  damp  chill  in  bed.  Jack 
was  less  gay  here  in  Paris  than  he  had  ever  been  in  Chicago, 
preoccupied  with  his  work,  frequently  gloomy,  as  if  he  fore- 
saw the  failure  of  his  ambitions.  Milly  felt  that  he  was 
ungrateful  for  his  fate.  Hadn't  he  the  dearest  wish  of  his 
heart  —  and  her,  too  ?  .  .  . 

Something  was  wrong,  she  never  knew  quite  what.  The 
trouble  was  that  she  had  no  job  whatever  now,  and  no  social 
distraction  to  take  the  place  of  work.  She  was  the  victim 
of  ideas  that  were  utterly  beyond  her  knowledge,  ideas  that 
must  impersonally  carry  the  Milly  Ridges  along  hi  their  mo- 
mentum, to  their  ultimate  destruction. 

"I  ought  to  be  very  happy,"  she  said  to  herself  piously. 
"We  both  ought  to  be." 

But  they  weren't. 


ONE  day  something  dreadful  happened.  Milly  realized 
that  she  was  to  have  a  child.  A  strange  kind  of  terror  seized 
her  at  the  conviction  This,  she  had  felt  ever  since  her 
marriage,  was  the  one  impossible  thing  to  happen :  she  had 
promised  herself  when  she  married  her  poor  young  artist  it 
should  never  be.  One  could  be  " Bohemian,"  "artistic"  — 
light  and  gay  —  without  money,  if  there  were  no  children. 
And  now,  somehow,  the  impossible  had  happened,  in  this 
unfamiliar  city,  far  away  from  friends  and  female  counsellors. 

She  wandered  out  into  the  street  in  a  dull  despair,  and 
after  a  time  got  on  top  of  an  omnibus  with  a  vague  idea  of 
going  off  somewhere,  never  to  return,  and  sat  there  in  the 
drizzle  until  she  reached  the  end  of  the  route,  which  hap- 
pened to  be  the  Luxembourg.  She  recognized  the  place  be- 
cause she  had  visited  the  gallery  with  her  husband  and  also 
dined  at  Foyot's  and  gone  to  the  Ode*on  on  one  of  their  ex- 
pansive occasions.  She  walked  about  aimlessly  for  a  while, 
feeling  that  she  must  get  farther  away  somehow,  then  wan- 
dered into  the  garden  and  sat  down  near  one  of  the  foun- 
tains among  the  nurses.  The  sun  had  come  out  from  the 
watery  sky,  and  it  was  amusing  to  watch  the  funny  French 
children  and  the  chattering  nurses  in  their  absurd  head- 
dresses. The  graceful  lines  of  the  old  Palais  made  an  elegant 
frame  for  the  garden,  the  fountains,  and  the  trees.  Milly 

190 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  191 

couldn't  brood  long,  but  after  a  time  the  awful  fact  would 
intrude  and  pull  her  up  with  a  start.  What  should  she  do  ? 
There  was  no  room  hi  their  life  for  a  child,  especially  just 
now.  She  could  never  tell  Jack.  What  useless  things 
women  were  anyway  !  She  didn't  wonder  that  men  treated 
them  badly,  as  they  did  sometimes,  she  had  heard. 

A  familiar  small  figure  came  towards  her.  It  was  Elsie 
Reddon,  the  two-year-old  girl  she  had  played  with  on  the 
steamer. 

"  Where's  Mama,  Elsie  ?  "  Milly  asked.  The  child  pointed 
off  to  a  corner  of  the  garden  near  by,  and  Milly  followed  her 
small  guide  to  the  bench  where  Marion  Reddon  was  seated. 
The  other  child  hadn't  yet  come,  but  evidently  was  not  far 
off.  Milly  felt  strangely  glad  to  see  the  little  woman  again, 
and  before  long  confided  in  her  her  own  trouble. 

" That's  good!"  Marion  Reddon  said  quickly  and  with 
evident  sincerity. 

"You  think  so  !"  Milly  cried  pettishly.     "Well,  I  don't." 

"It  simplifies  everything  so." 

"Simplifies?" 

"Of  course.  When  you're  having  children,  there  are  some 
things  you  can't  do  —  just  a  few  you  can  —  and  so  you  do 
what  you  can  and  don't  worry  about  the  rest." 

"It  spoils  your  freedom." 

The  pale-faced  little  woman  laughed. 

"Freedom?  That's  book-talk.  Most  people  do  so  much 
more  when  they  aren't  free  than  when  they  are.  Sam  says 
it's  the  same  with  his  work.  When  he's  free,  he  does  nothing 
at  all  because  there's  so  much  time  and  so  many  things  he'd 
like  to  try.  But  when  he's  tied  down  with  a  lot  of  work  at 


192  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

the  school,  then  he  uses  every  spare  moment  and  gets  some- 
thing done  —  'just  to  spite  the  devil/" 

She  smiled  drolly. 

"You'll  see  when  it  comes." 

Milly  looked  unconvinced  and  said  something  about  "the 
unfair  burden  on  women,"  the  sort  of  talk  her  more  advanced 
women  friends  were  beginning  to  indulge  in.  Mrs.  Reddon 
had  other  views. 

"It's  the  natural  thing,"  she  persisted.  "If  I  didn't  want 
children  for  myself,  I'd  have  'em  anyway  for  Sam." 

"Does  he  like  babies?" 

"Not  especially.  Few  men  do  at  first.  But  it  trains 
him.  And  it  makes  a  hold  in  the  world  for  him." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

' '  Children  make  a  home  —  you  have  to  have  one.  The  man 
can't  run  away  and  forget  it." 

She  smiled  with  her  droll  expression  of  worldly  wisdom. 

"Sam  would  be  in  mischief  half  the  time,  if  it  weren't  for  us. 
He'd  be  running  here  and  there,  sitting  up  all  hours,  wasting 
his  energies  smoking  and  drinking  with  everybody  he  met  — 
and  now  he  can't  —  very  much." 

"But  —  but  —  how  about  you  ? " 

"Oh,"  the  little  woman  continued  calmly,  "I  don't  flatter 
myself  that  I  could  hold  my  husband  long  alone,  without  the 
children."  She  looked  Milly  straight  in  the  eyes  and  smiled. 
"Few  women  can,  you  know." 

"I  don't  see  why  not." 

"They  get  used  to  us  —  in  every  way  —  and  want  change, 
don't  you  see  that?  They  know  every  idea  we  have,  every 
habit,  every  look  good  and  bad  —  clever  men,  especially." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  193 

"So  we  know  them  !" 

"Of  course!  But  women  don't  like  change,  variety  — 
the  best  of  us  don't.  We  aren't  venturesome.  Men  are, 
you  see,  and  that's  the  difference.  ...  I  don't  know  that 
we  mightn't  become  so  if  we  had  the  chance,  but  we've  been 
deprived  of  it  for  so  long  that  we  have  lost  the  courage,  the 
desire  for  change  almost.  What  we  know  we  cling  to, 
isn't  that  so?" 

She  rose  to  capture  the  wandering  Elsie. 

"I  must  go  back  now  to  get  Sam's  dejeuner.  Won't  you 
come  ?  He'd  love  to  see  you  —  he  often  speaks  about  you 
and  your  husband." 

Milly  accepted  readily  enough.  Although  she  did  not 
agree  with  all  that  Marion  Reddon  had  said,  she  was  soothed 
by  the  talk,  and  she  had  a  curiosity  to  see  the  Reddon  menage 
in  operation. 

"So,"  she  remarked,  as  they  passed  through  the  great  gilt 
gate  out  to  the  noisy  street,  "you  think  a  woman  should 
have  children  to  keep  a  man  true  to  her." 

"Tied  to  her,"  Marion  Reddon  emended,  "and  truer  than 
he  otherwise  might  be.  Then  they  are  something  in  case 
the  husband  quits  altogether  —  if  he  turns  out  to  be  a  bad 
lot.  Most  of  them  don't,  of  course;  they  are  loyal  and 
faithful.  But  if  they  do,  then  a  woman  has  the  children, 
and  that's  a  world  for  any  one." 

"It  makes  it  all  the  worse  —  if  she  has  to  support  them 
without  a  man's  help." 

"I  wonder  !  It's  the  incentive  that  makes  work  effective, 
isn't  it?" 

They  crossed   the  vivid   stream  of   the  boulevard,  the 


194  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

child  between  them,  and  mounted  the  hill  towards  the 
Pantheon. 

"You  know  the  time  is  coming  when  the  woman  will 
again  be  the  responsible  head  of  the  family  in  form  as  she  is 
in  fact  to-day,  and  then  she  will  tolerate  the  man  about 
her  house  just  so  long  as  she  thinks  him  a  fit  father,  and  take 
another  if  she  prefers  him  as  the  father  of  her  children." 

These  anarchistic  doctrines  had  a  quaint  absurdity  on  the 
lips  of  this  mild,  little  New  England  woman.  Milly,  not 
having  lived  in  circles  where  the  fundamental  relations  of 
life  were  discussed  with  such  philosophical  frankness,  was 
puzzled.  The  Reddons  must  be  "queer"  people,  she 
thought. 

"So  I  tell  Sam  when  he  gets  fussy  that  if  he  isn't  careful, 
I'll  flanquer  la  porte  to  him  and  run  the  shop  myself." 

"My!" 

"I  could,  too,  and  he  knows  it  —  which  is  very  salutary 
for  him  when  he  gets  uppish  and  dictatorial,  as  all  men  will 
at  times." 

"How  could  you?" 

"You  see  I'm  an  expert  taxidermist.  I  learned  the  thing 
vacations  to  help  an  uncle  out,  who  was  a  collector.  I  could 
always  make  a  living  at  it,  and  one  for  the  kiddies  too. 
That's  the  nub  of  the  whole  matter,  as  we  used  to  say  in  the 
country." 

(Later,  Milly  remembered  this  talk  in  its  every  bearing, 
and  had  reason  to  appreciate  the  profound  truth  of  the  last 
statement.) 

"But  you  love  your  husband,"  Milly  remarked  as  if  to 
reassure  herself. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  195 

"Of  course  I  do,  or  I  shouldn't  be  living  with  him  and 
bearing  his  children.  But  he  needs  me  and  the  children 
rather  more  than  I  need  him  —  which  is  the  better  way." 

The  Reddons  lived  on  the  fourth  floor  back  of  an  old 
lantern-jawed  building  that  tilted  uphill  behind  Ste.  Gene- 
vieve.  Milly  found  the  stairs  steep  and  dark  and  the  odor 
of  the  old  building  anything  but  pleasant.  Marion  assured 
her  cheerfully  that  the  smell  was  not  unhealthy,  and  as  they 
kept  their  windows  open  most  of  the  time  they  did  not  mind 
it.  The  three  little  rooms  of  the  apartement  meublee  were 
dingy,  to  say  the  least,  but  they  looked  out  over  the  clock 
tower  of  Ste.  Genevi&ve  into  an  old  college  garden. 

"I  make  Sam  get  the  coffee  mornings,  and  I  do  the  de- 
jeuner; then  an  old  woman  comes  in  to  clean  us  up  and  cook 
dinner,  if  we  don't  go  out.  Sam  is  rather  given  to  the  student 
cafe's." 

Mrs.  Reddon  moved  dexterously  within  the  confined  limits 
of  the  closet  kitchen  and  continued  to  describe  her  house- 
hold. "You  see  we  pay  only  thirty  dollars  a  month  for 
this  place,  and  I  cover  the  housekeeping  bills  with  another 
thirty  or  a  little  more." 

"  Heavens  !    How  can  you  do  it  ?"  Milly  gasped. 

Their  pension  was  over  that  amount  apiece. 

"It's  cheaper  than  anything  at  home,  and  lots  more  fun  !" 

Presently  Sam  Reddon  came  whistling  upstairs.  He 
stopped  in  histrionic  surprise  at  sight  of  Milly. 

"Not  really,  Milady!     How  did  you  find  your  way?" 

"By  accident." 

"Ma,"  he  sang  out  to  his  wife,  "you  aren't  going  to  try 


196  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

one  of  your  historic  stews  on  Mrs.  Bragdon  —  our  one  fash- 
ionable visitor  of  the  season  ?  Don't  you  think  we  had  better 
make  an  occasion  of  this  and  adjourn  to  Foyot's?" 

"No,"  his  wife  replied  firmly,  " you've  had  too  many 
'occasions'  this  month.  One  of  my  dejeuners  won't  hurt 
Mrs.  Bragdon  or  you  either." 

"Well,"  he  submitted  dolefully,  "she  can't  drink  that  red 
ink  you  mistakenly  bought  for  wine,  my  dear.  .  .  .  I'll 
just  fetch  a  bottle  of  something  drinkable." 

"Hurry  then  !     Dejeuner  is  quite  ready." 

"You  see,"  she  observed  placidly  as  Reddon  departed, 
"he  takes  every  excuse  to  escape  his  work  and  make  a  holi- 
day. It  wasn't  altogether  you,  my  dear !" 

"It's  so  human!" 

"It's  so  — Sam." 

They  had  a  very  jolly  luncheon,  and  afterwards,  the  old 
servant  having  arrived  to  take  charge  of  the  apartment  and 
Elsie,  the  two  women  accompanied  Reddon  down  the  hill  as 
far  as  the  Sorbonne,  where  Marion  was  attending  a  course 
of  lectures.  Milly  gathered  that  the  little  woman,  in  spite 
of  her  housekeeping,  the  one  child  on  the  spot,  and  another 
coming,  had  many  lively  interests  and  saw  far  more  of  Paris, 
which  she  loved,  than  Milly  and  her  husband  did.  Both  the 
Reddons  lived  carelessly,  but  lived  hard  every  minute,  taking 
all  their  chances,  good  and  bad,  of  the  minutes  to  come.  It 
was  a  useful  philosophy,  but  not  one  that  Milly  wholly  ad- 
mired. 

Late  that  afternoon  Milly  met  her  husband  in  a  frame  of 
mind  much  more  serene  than  it  was  before  she  saw  the  Red- 
dons,  and  told  him  her  momentous  news.  He  seemed  more 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  197 

pleased  and  less  disturbed  by  it  than  she  had  supposed 
possible.  A  few  days  later  he  got  the  proof-sheets  of  Rein- 
hard's  novel  from  the  trunk,  where  they  had  been  lying  neg- 
lected, and  worked  diligently  on  the  foolish  sketches  required 
by  the  text  to  illustrate  the  hero  and  heroine  in  their  "tense" 
moments.  He  finished  the  job  before  they  left  Paris  in 
March,  which  was  his  male  way  of  acknowledging  the  new 
obligation  that  was  on  its  way. 

Milly  thought  there  might  be  something  in  Marion  Red- 
don's  ideas  about  men,  after  all. 


VI 

THE    CHILD 

AFTEK  much  debate  Milly  resolved  to  take  a  leaf  from 
Marion  Reddon's  philosophy  and  not  let  her  "-condition" 
make  any  difference  in  her  husband's  plans;  they  should 
not  give  up  the  trip  to  Italy  because  of  possible  dangers 
or  discomforts  to  her.  So  they  went  to  Florence  and  after- 
wards to  Rome,  where  the  Reddons,  having  miraculously 
procured  the  price  of  the  railroad  tickets  at  the  last  moment, 
joined  them  and  gave  them  lessons  in  how  to  see  Europe  as 
the  Europeans  see  it.  After  a  short  visit  to  Venice,  the  two 
families  settled  for  the  summer  in  a  quiet  little  village  of 
the  Austrian  Tyrol,  where  the  men  tried  to  work,  but  for 
the  most  part  climbed  mountains  and  drank  beer  instead. 
Then  in  September  they  were  back  in  Paris ;  the  Reddons, 
who  had  exhausted  all  their  resources,  went  home  to  America 
for  the  year's  grind  in  the  technical  school ;  and  the  Bragdons 
settled  in  a  small  house  in  Neuilly.  And  there  early  in  Oc- 
tober Milly's  little  girl  came  safely  into  the  world. 

The  small  brick  house  with  its  scrap  of  garden  and  gravelled 
drive  proved  to  be  the  pleasantest  of  Milly's  European  ex- 
periences. It  was  the  most  regularly  domestic  thing  they 
did.  The  artist  still  went  to  the  school  in  the  mornings, 
but  worked  at  home  in  the  afternoons.  Milly  convalesced 
healthily  and  was  properly  absorbed  in  her  baby  and  her 

198 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  199 

house,  so  that  she  did  not  feel  lonely  during  her  husband's 
absences  in  Paris.  Now  that  the  child  had  got  into  the  world, 
after  all  her  fears  and  forebodings,  Milly  was  surprised  at 
the  naturalness  of  the  event.  As  Marion  Reddon  had  said, 
it  really  simplified  life.  First  consideration  must  always  be 
the  Baby.  Mdle.  Virginia,  as  she  was  called  after  Milly's 
mother,  could  do  so  little  in  this  world  at  present  that  its 
parents'  ambitions  were  necessarily  curbed.  Milly  was  an 
admirably  devoted  mother.  She  had  always  liked  babies 
since  she  was  a  very  little  girl,  and  she  became  wholly  wrapped 
up  in  her  own  human  venture.  The  summer  while  the  child 
was  coming  had  drawn  her  very  close  to  Marion  Reddon, 
with  whom  she  had  established  a  staunch  bond  of  the 
woman's  league,  offensive  and  defensive,  against  men. 
Marion,  she  felt,  understood  both  babies  and  men.  Al- 
though she  could  not  approve  of  all  Marion's  ideas  about 
the  relations  of  the  sexes,  she  admired  the  frank,  brave, 
humorous  way  in  which  she  solved  her  own  life. 

Curiously  enough,  the  child  seemed  to  set  Milly  apart 
from  her  husband  —  and  from  the  world  of  men  in  general. 
Jack  was  no  longer  the  supreme  emotional  fact  in  her  life. 
He  was  a  good  husband;  she  was  more  conscious  of  that 
than  ever  before.  He  had  been  very  tender  and  considerate 
of  her  during  her  pregnancy,  keeping  up  her  spirits,  guarding 
her  against  folly,  insisting  on  luxuries  in  their  travels  so 
that  she  might  be  thoroughly  comfortable.  Thus  he  went 
to  Gossensass,  not  for  his  own  profit  and  pleasure,  but  be- 
cause the  doctor  they  consulted  in  Venice  advised  this  se- 
cluded mountain  resort.  And  when  the  time  of  the  birth 
came,  he  had  been  properly  solicitous  to  see  that  she  was 


200  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

provided  with  the  best  attendance  and  care,  and  Milly  knew 
vaguely  that  he  had  spent  lavishly  of  their  hoard  for  this  pur- 
pose. Milly  was  sure  he  loved  her,  and  what  was  also  very 
important  to  her,  she  was  sure  that  he  was  "a  good  man,"  — 
clean-minded  and  unselfish  with  a  woman.  Even  if  he 
should  come  to  love  her  less  passionately  than  at  the  begin- 
ning, he  was  the  loyal  sort  of  American,  who  would  not  let 
that  fact  furnish  him  with  excuse  for  errancy.  And  she 
loved  him,  of  course  —  was  " quite  crazy"  about  him,  as  she 
expressed  it  to  Marion  —  and  still  believed  in  his  glorious 
future  as  a  great  painter. 

Yet  in  some  indefinable  way  he  had  sunk  from  first  to 
second  place  in  her  thoughts  and  might  soon  —  who  knows  ? 
—  descend  to  third  place  in  the  family  triangle.  As  for  all 
other  men,  like  Sam  Reddon  and  the  artists  Jack  brought  to 
the  house,  they  began  to  have  for  her  the  aspect  of  coarse 
and  rather  silly  beings,  essentially  selfish  and  sensual.  "Oh, 
he's  just  a  man"  became  more  and  more  in  her  mouth  the 
mocking  formula  to  'indicate  male  inferiority.  Later  it 
was,  "  They're  all  alike,  men."  Thus  the  child  brought  out  in 
Milly  the  consciousness  of  womanhood.  She  was  more  the 
mother  now  than  the  wife,  as  was  natural,  but  she  had  no 
desire  to  become  again  the  wife,  paramount,  to  any  man.  .  .  . 

Meanwhile  any  one  of  those  who  came  in  upon  them  in 
the  Neuilly  house  and  saw  the  father  and  mother  grouped 
about  the  baby's  bassinet  would  say,  —  "An  ideal  young 
pair  —  has  he  much  talent  ?  " 

This  winter  when  she  grew  stronger  Milly  saw  more  of 
people  than  before.  She  had  two  very  capable  servants  and 
her  little  household  ran  smoothly,  though  its  cost  made 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  201 

severe  inroads  on  the  "hoard."  People  she  knew  drifted 
through  Paris  and  were  glad  to  lunch  or  dine  in  the  little 
Neuilly  house.  Sally  Norton,  who  was  now  Mrs.  Willie 
Ashforth,  having  finally  secured  the  elderly  bachelor,  was 
one  of  the  first  to  come.  Sally  laughed  over  the  small  house, 
over  Milly's  baby,  over  Milly  as  a  mother.  She  seemed 
determined  to  consider  Milly  as  an  irresponsible  joke  in  every- 
thing she  did,  but  she  was  good-natured  and  lively  as  always, 
and  absorbed  in  her  own  plans.  The  Ashforths  were  build- 
ing at  Highland  Forest,  a  fashionable  suburb  outside  of 
Chicago.  Vivie  had  had  a  "  desperate  affair  "  with  a  divorced 
man,  etc.,  etc.  Then  the  Gilberts  turned  up  unexpectedly 
one  day,  gracious  and  forgiving  to  Milly,  and  apparently 
very  much  bored  with  themselves  in  Paris.  Milly  gave 
them  a  nice  little  dinner,  to  which  she  had  the  smartest 
people  she  knew,  which  was  her  way  of  " getting  even"  with 
Nettie  for  the  snubs.  Others  came  more  frequently  as 
the  spring  influx  of  Americans  arrived.  Occasionally  Jack 
complained  of  the  time  these  idle  wanderers  consumed, 
especially  of  the  precious  afternoons  lost  when  they  came  for 
luncheon  and  stayed  until  tea.  Milly  thought  it  selfish  of 
him  to  object  to  "her  one  pleasure,"  now  that  "she  was  tied 
up  in  the  house."  Perhaps  he  felt  so  too,  for  he  said  no  more, 
and  remained  at  the  school  to  work  when  there  was  likely 
to  be  company  at  the  Neuilly  house.  On  the  whole  he  was 
amiably  indulgent  with  his  wife,  according  to  the  best  Ameri- 
can tradition.  .  .  .  So  with  friends,  new  and  old,  the  second 
year  of  their  foreign  life  drew  on  towards  summer.  The 
baby  flourished,  and  all  was  well.  They  began  to  talk  of 
summer  plans. 


202  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

A  cheap  place  in  the  country  was  imperative,  for  by  this 
time  their  "hoard"  had  shrunk  to  a  mite  in  three  figures, 
and  unless  Big  Brother,  who  had  been  doing  well  in  Big 
Business  by  all  accounts,  should  remember  to  send  over 
additional  funds  as  he  had  promised,  they  must  return  to 
America  in  the  autumn.  Jack  seemed  loath  to  remind  Big 
Brother  of  their  needs  as  Milly  wanted  him  to  do.  Yet  he 
must  have  more  time :  he  was  not  yet  ready  to  get  a  living 
out  of  his  pictures.  He  had  not  done  enough  work,  he  said. 
Milly,  who  had  expected  that  in  a  year  or  so  he  would  become 
an  accomplished  painter,  was  disturbed.  She  found  the  oils 
he  was  doing,  —  the  picture  of  her  beside  the  baby's  bassinet 
on  the  terrace,  for  instance,  —  disappointing.  It  was  dis- 
tinctly less  understandable  and  amusing  than  his  pen-and- 
ink  work  had  been,  and  she  felt  a  certain  relief  when  he  did 
some  comic  sketches  of  the  Brittany  nurses  to  send  to  a 
magazine.  His  hand  had  not  lost  the  old  cunning,  if  it  had 
not  gained  the  new.  Was  it  possible  that  her  husband  was 
not  born  to  be  a  great  painter?  .  .  .  "I  don't  know  about 
such  things,"  she  murmured  into  the  baby's  ear.  "Jack 
must  decide  for  himself  what's  best." 

She  found  it  very  convenient  to  have  a  husband  to  take 
upon  himself  decision  and  responsibility,  the  two  most 
annoying  things  in  life. 


VII 

BESIDE   THE   RESOUNDING   SEA 

AFTER  much  of  the  usual  futile  discussion  they  decided 
upon  Klerac,  a  little  place  on  the  coast  of  Brittany,  which 
certain  artists  whom  Bragdon  knew  recommended.  One 
American  landscapist  of  established  reputation  painted 
in  that  region,  and  around  him  had  gathered  a  number  of 
his  countrymen,  in  the  hope  of  acquiring  if  not  his  skill  at 
least  some  of  his  commercial  talent  for  self-exploitation. 

So  the  end  of  June  found  them  settled  comfortably  enough 
in  the  Hotel  du  Passage  just  across  the  bay  from  Douarnenez, 
where  the  great  one  had  his  studio.  Milly,  who  usually  had 
some  difficulty  in  adjusting  herself  to  a  new  situation  and 
missed  the  freedoms  of  her  own  house,  took  to  Klerac  after 
the  first  few  days  of  strangeness.  The  tiny  village  and  the 
sleepy  country  were  utterly  unlike  anything  she  had  ever 
seen  or  dreamed  of  before.  Green  branches  of  broad  chest- 
nut trees  overhung  the  dark  water  of  the  little  bay,  and  a 
sea  of  the  deepest  purple  lay  out  beyond  the  headland  and 
boomed  against  the  sand-dunes.  The  bay  and  the  brilliant 
sea  were  perpetually  alive  with  the  fishing  craft,  which  were 
picturesquely  adorned  with  colored  sails.  And  inland,  only 
a  few  steps  from  all  this  vivid  coloring  of  the  sea,  green  lanes 
meandered  between  lofty  hedges  of  thick  blackberry  vines. 
Always,  even  among  the  remoter  fields,  there  was  the  muffled 
murmur  of  the  sea  on  the  sand  and  the  tang  of  salt  in  the 

203 


204  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

air.  The  queer,  dark  little  people  of  the  place  still  wore 
about  their  daily  tasks  their  picturesque  costumes,  and 
spoke  little  French.  One  met  them  as  in  an  opera,  gathering 
kelp  on  the  beach,  driving  their  little  tip  carts  through  the 
lanes,  or  singing  beside  their  thatched  cottages. 

From  her  first  exploratory  walks  with  her  husband  Milly 
returned  quite  ravished  by  the  quality  of  the  place,  its  beauty 
of  colored  sea  and  peaceful  country,  and  the  little  gray  houses 
sheltered  by  large  trees.  Here  she  dreamed,  in  this  fragrant 
salty  air,  they  would  Jiave  an  enchanting  summer  withdrawn 
from  the  world,  and  great  deeds  would  be  done  by  her  hus- 
band. "I  could  almost  paint  myself  here,"  she  said  to  him, 
"it  all  looks  so  quaint  and  lovely."  Jack  liked  the  place, 
and  quickly  set  up  his  easel  under  the  trees  down  by  the 
stone  pier  where  the  fishing-boats  landed  and  where  there  was 
always  a  noisy,  lively  scene.  Milly  idled  near  by  in  the  sand 
with  the  baby.  But  the  work  did  not  go  fast.  She  thought 
that  Jack  must  be  fagged  after  the  long  winter  indoors,  and 
urged  him  to  rest  for  a  while.  They  took  to  walking  through 
the  lanes  and  along  the  beaches.  They  found  little  to  say 
to  each  other;  sometimes  she  thought  that  she  bored  him 
and  he  would  rather  be  alone.  They  were  suffering,  natu- 
rally, from  the  too  great  intimacy  of  the  past  two  years. 
Neither  had  a  spontaneous  thought  to  offer  the  other,  — 
no  reaction  to  arouse  surprise  and  discussion.  Milly  could 
not  comprehend  her  husband's  restless  depression,  his  wish 
to  be  at  something  which  he  could  not  formulate  to  himself 
clearly  enough  to  do.  She  decided  that  he  was  developing 
nerves  and  recommended  bathing  in  the  sea.  When  he  took 
to  painting  again,  she  would  wander  along  the  beach  by  her- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  205 

self  and  watch  the  boys  fishing  for  ecrevisses  in  the  salt  pools 
among  the  rocks,  or  lay  prone  on  the  sand  gazing  at  the 
colored  sails  on  the  dark  sea.  In  spite  of  all  the  peace  and 
the  beauty  about  her  she  was  lonely,  and  asked  herself  some- 
times if  this  was  what  it  meant  to  be  an  artist's  wife.  Was 
this  all  ?  Was  life  to  be  like  this  for  years  and  years  ?  .  .  . 

Their  hotel  was  a  rambling  low  building  surrounded  by 
high  walls,  with  a  high  terrace  behind,  from  which  there  was 
a  glimpse  of  the  sea  and  which  was  well  shaded  by  branching 
plane  trees.  Here  on  calm  summer  nights  the  dinner  table 
was  spread  for  the  pensionnaires,  who  gradually  arrived. 
There  were  a  few  French,  of  a  nondescript  sort,  a  fat  Amer- 
ican from  Honolulu,  who  had  been  rolling  about  Europe 
since  the  Spanish  War,  in  which  he  had  had  some  part.  Then 
there  was  a  Russian  lady  with  two  children  and  a  Finnish 
maid.  She  was  already  there  when  they  arrived  and  kept 
by  herself,  taking  her  meals  at  a  little  table  with  her  oldest 
child.  This  Russian,  a  Madame  Saratoff,  piqued  Milly's 
curiosity,  and  she  soon  became  acquainted  with  her.  One 
day  when  they  happened  to  be  alone  on  the  terrace,  the 
Russian  lady  turned  to  her  with  a  swift  smile,  - 

"You  are  American?"  and  when  Milly  admitted  it,  she 
added,  "One  can  always  tell  the  American  women  from  the 
English." 

She  spoke  English  easily,  with  the  slightest  sort  of  accent 
that  merely  added  distinction  to  whatever  she  said.  Madame 
Saratoff  was  still  young,  and  though  not  a  beautiful  woman, 
had  an  air  of  privilege  and  breeding,  with  something  odd  in 
the  glitter  of  her  eyes  and  the  wolfish  way  in  which  her 
curving  upper  lip  revealed  strong  white  teeth.  She  had  a 


206  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

good  figure,  as  Milly  had  already  recognized,  and  she  dressed 
well,  with  great  simplicity.  Milly  felt  interested  in  her, 
and  the  women  talked  for  an  hour.  Milly  reported  to  her 
husband :  — 

"She's  really  a  Baroness.  Her  husband  is  in  the  diplo- 
matic service  —  off  in  the  east  somewhere,  and  she's  here 
alone  with  the  children  and  her  maid.  Don't  you  think  she's 
interesting  looking  ?  " 

The  artist  replied  indifferently,  — 

"Not  particularly  —  she  has  fine  hands." 

He  seemed  to  have  noticed  that  about  her. 

They  quickly  became  better  acquainted  with  Madame 
Saratoff,  who,  it  seemed,  had  been  in  Brittany  before  and 
knew  the  coast  thoroughly.  She  explained  that  the  little 
hotel  became  unendurable  later  with  the  canaille  des  artistes, 
and  so  she  had  rented  an  old  manoir  in  the  neighborhood, 
which  was  being  put  to  rights  for  her.  The  next  afternoon 
the  three  walked  to  see  the  manoir  through  a  maze  of  little 
lanes.  It  was  a  lovely  old  gray  building  with  crumbling 
walls  and  had  evidently  once  been  the  seat  of  a  considerable 
family.  But  only  a  half  dozen  rooms  were  now  habitable, 
and  in  the  cracks  of  the  great  walls  that  surrounded  the 
garden  thick  roots  of  creepers  twisted  and  curled  upwards. 
From  the  other  end  of  the  garden,  through  a  break  in  the  old 
hedge,  there  was  a  glimpse  of  the  sea,  and  in  one  corner  was 
the  ruin  of  a  chapel  surmounted  by  an  iron  cross.  Madame 
Saratoff  showed  them  all  the  rooms,  into  which  men  were 
putting  some  furniture  she  had  bought  in  the  neighborhood 
—  old  armoires  and  brass-bound  chests  of  black  oak  as  well 
as  some  modern  iron  beds  and  dressing-tables.  Milly  ad- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  207 

mired  the  peaceful  gray  manoir,  and  Bragdon  observed  as 
they  retraced  their  way  alone  through  the  lanes :  — 

"That  woman  has  a  lot  of  energy  in  her !  It  shows  in 
her  movements  —  she  has  personality,  character." 

Milly  had  never  heard  him  say  as  much  as  that  about  any 
other  woman,  and  she  wondered  how  such  large  generali- 
zations could  be  made  from  the  fact  that  a  woman  was  fitting 
up  an  old  house.  She  was  vaguely  jealous,  as  any  woman 
might  be,  that  her  husband  should  choose  just  those  quali- 
ties for  commendation. 

She  went  often  thereafter  to  the  manoir  while  her  husband 
was  painting,  and  marvelled  at  the  ease  and  sureness  with 
which  the  Russian  installed  herself,  her  only  helpers  being 
the  stupid  peasants,  who  seemed  to  understand  no  language 
but  then-  own  jargon. 

"I'm  used  to  driving  cattle,"  the  Russian  explained  to 
Milly  with  a  little  laugh.  "You  see  my  father  had  estates 
in  southern  Russia,  and  I  lived  there  a  good  deal  before  I  was 
married." 

"They  must  be  quite  important,"  Milly  reported  to  Jack. 
"They  seem  to  know  people  all  over  Europe." 

"Oh,  that's  Russian,"  he  explained. 

"And  Baron  Saratoff  is  away  on  a  most  important  mission." 

"Absent  husbands  ought  to  be  !" 

"I  don't  believe  she  cares  for  him  much." 

"How  can  you  tell  that  so  soon?" 

"Oh  !"  Milly  replied  vaguely,  as  if  that  were  a  point  few 
women  could  keep  from  other  women. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Russian  lady  had  given  Milly  some 
new  and  startling  lights  upon  marriage. 


208  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"I  am,"  she  told  Milly  in  her  precise  speech,  "what  you 
call  the  'show  wife.'  I  go  to  parties,  to  court  —  all  rigged 
up,  —  you  say  rigged,  no  ?  —  dressed  then  very  grand  with 
my  jewels.  And  I  have  children,  see!"  She  pointed  to 
the  healthy  little  Saratoffs  playing  in  the  garden.  "My 
husband  goes  away  on  his  business  —  makes  long  journeys. 
He  amuses  himself.  When  he  comes  back,  I  have  a  child,  — 
voild.  She  laughed  and  showed  her  white  teeth.  "But  I 
have  my  vacations  sometimes,  too,  like  this." 

Milly  thought  that  the  Russian  type  of  marriage  must 
be  much  inferior  to  the  American,  at  least  the  Chicago 
variety,  where  if  there  was  any  going  away  from  home,  it 
was  usually  the  wife  who  went,  and  she  confided  this  opinion 
to  Jack,  who  said  with  a  laugh :  — 

"Oh,  you  can  never  understand  these  foreigners.  She's 
probably  like  every  one  else.  .  .  .  But  I'd  like  to  paint  her 
and  get  that  smile  of  hers." 

"Why  don't  you  ask  her?" 

"Perhaps  I  will  one  of  these  days." 

The  hotel  gradually  filled  up.  The  great  painter  had  come 
and  with  him  his  satellites,  chiefly  young  American  women, 
who  "painted  all  over  the  place,"  as  Bragdon  put  it.  The 
long  table  d'hdte  under  the  plane  trees  was  a  cheerful  if 
somewhat  noisy  occasion  these  summer  nights,  with  the  black, 
star-strewn  canopy  above.  They  all  drank  the  bottled  cider 
and  talked  pictures  and  joked  and  sang  when  so  moved. 
Even  if  the  spirit  was  somewhat  cheaply  effervescent,  like 
the  cider,  there  was  plenty  of  talk,  clashing  of  eager  ideas, 
and  Milly  liked  it  even  more  than  Bragdon.  He  seemed 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  209 

older  than  the  other  artists,  perhaps  because  he  was  married 
and  less  given  to  idle  chatter.  The  great  man  singled  him 
out  for  companionship  after  the  first  week,  and  gave  pat- 
ronizing praise  to  his  work. 

"You  are  still  young,"  he  said,  with  a  sigh  for  his  own  sixty 
years.  "  Wait  another  ten  years  and  you  may  find  something 
to  say." 

Jack,  repeating  these  words  to  his  wife,  added,  —  "And 
where  do  you  suppose  we'd  be  if  I  should  wait  another  ten 
years  ?  On  the  street." 

Tell  an  American  to  wait  ten  years  in  order  to  have  some- 
thing to  say ! 

"He's  jealous,"  Milly  pronounced.  "You're  going  to  do 
something  stunning  this  summer,  I  just  know  it." 

"How  do  you  know  it?"  he  asked  teasingly. 

"Because  we  can't  wait  ten  years  !" 

"Urn,"  the  artist  sighed,  "I  should  think  not." 


VIII 

THE   PICTURE 

JUST  how  it  came  about  Milly  never  remembered,  but  in 
the  weeks  that  followed  it  was  arranged  that  Jack  should 
do  the  Russian  lady's  portrait.  Milly  flattered  herself  at 
the  time  that  she  had  produced  this  result.  Madame  Sara- 
toff  came  rarely  to  the  hotel  after  she  was  installed  in  her 
old  manoir,  but  she  often  drove  to  the  beach  for  her  bath  and 
took  Milly  home  with  her  for  luncheon.  And  Jack  would 
join  them  late  in  the  long  afternoon  for  tea.  On  one  of  these 
occasions  the  affair  was  settled. 

Bragdon  decided  to  do  the  figure  out  of  doors  in  a  corner 
of  the  ruined  garden  wall  with  a  clustering  festoon  of  purple 
creeper  above  and  a  narrow  slit  of  sea  in  the  distant  back- 
ground. Against  the  gray  and  green  and  purple  of  the  wall 
he  placed  Madame  Saratoff,  who  was  tall,  with  a  supple, 
bony  figure.  It  was  for  him  a  daring  and  difficult  composi- 
tion. The  first  afternoon,  while  the  figure  was  being  lined 
in  with  charcoal,  Milly  was  much  excited.  She  tried  to  keep 
quite  still,  but  Madame  Saratoff  persisted  in  making  little 
jokes  and  impertinent  comments  upon  the  artist.  She  did 
not  seem  to  feel  the  importance  of  the  event.  Milly  thought 
to  herself,  "How  wonderful  if  he  should  do  a  really  stun- 
ning picture  and  have  it  in  the  Salon  next  season  !"  and  she 
said  to  herself,  "Portrait  of  the  Baroness  Saratoff  by 

210 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  211 

John  Archer  Bragdon."  That  would  be  a  start  towards 
fame  ! 

But  the  start  was  scarcely  perceptible  those  first  days. 
Milly  could  make  nothing  of  the  blurred  canvas  and  was 
depressed.  Jack  seemed  more  intent  on  watching  the  lithe 
figure,  with  the  mottled  flesh  tones,  the  steel-blue  eyes,  the 
mocking  mouth  than  in  putting  brush  to  canvas.  When 
Milly  complained  of  his  dawdling,  the  Baroness  remarked 
with  a  curl  of  her  lips,  - 

"How  do  you  expect  an  artist  to  work  with  his  wife  hang- 
ing over  his  brushes  and  counting  every  stroke?" 

Milly  pretended  to  be  hurt  and  ran  off  to  the  other  end  of 
the  garden.  She  asked  her  husband  on  their  way  back  if 
she  were  really  in  the  way,  and  though  he  laughed  at  her 
question  and  considered  the  Russian  woman's  remark  as 
merely  one  of  her  rather  feline  jokes,  Milly  did  not  come  the 
next  day.  She  said  the  baby  was  sick,  and  needed  her 
attention.  It  was  several  days  before  she  returned  to  the 
manoir,  and  then  because  Jack  made  a  point  of  it.  She  was 
astonished  at  the  progress  which  he  had  made.  The  pic- 
ture had  suddenly  leaped  into  life. 

"See!"  the  Russian  remarked,  indicating  the  canvas 
with  a  slow  sweep  of  her  long,  thin  fingers.  "The  painter 
has  done  all  that  without  his  wife's  help." 

Milly  resented  the  joke.  But  it  was  true  that  in  these 
few  days  the  picture  had  grown  surprisingly :  the  pose  of 
the  tall  figure,  the  background  was  all  firmly  worked  in,  and 
he  had  begun  to  define  the  features,  —  the  perilous  part. 
Already  something  of  the  subtle  mockery  of  the  Russian 
woman's  expression  was  there.  Milly  turned  away.  For 


212  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

the  first  time  she  felt  outside  her  husband's  world  and  in 
the  way.  Presently,  in  spite  of  the  Baroness's  protests,  she 
took  little  Paul  Saratoff  to  the  beach.  When  her  husband 
came  in  at  the  hotel  just  in  time  for  dinner  and  expressed 
surprise  that  she  had  not  returned  to  the  manoir  for  him,  she 
said  coldly,  — 

"Oh,  I  didn't  care  to  —  I  didn't  want  to  interrupt." 

"Anna  expected  you  back  to  tea." 

"I  guess  not." 

Bragdon  gave  her  a  swift  glance,  but  said  nothing.  This 
was  a  new  aspect  of  his  wife,  and  it  evidently  puzzled  him. 
He  was  too  much  absorbed  by  his  picture,  however,  to  give 
much  heed  to  anything. 

Latterly  another  American  had  joined  the  circle  around 
the  dinner  table  on  the  terrace,  —  a  long,  lanky  young  man 
who  had  been  in  the  navy  during  the  late  war  and  was  now 
engaged  in  the  production  of  literature.  That  is,  he  con- 
tributed profusely  to  those  American  magazines  with  flaming 
covers  stories  of  love  and  adventure  in  strange  seas,  —  the 
highly  seasoned  bonbon  entertainment  for  the  young.  He 
was  southern  by  birth  with  a  pronounced  manner  towards 
women.  And  Milly  found  him  attractive.  Roberts  and  the 
fat  Hawaiian  wit  had  many  encounters  that  kept  the  table 
stirred.  To-night  they  were  discussing  the  needs  of  the 
artist  nature,  —  and  "temperament."  That  was  a  term  not 
much  in  vogue  in  the  Chicago  of  Milly's  time,  but  it  seemed 
to  occupy  endlessly  the  talkers  about  the  table  at  the  Hotel 
du  Passage.  Milly  never  understood  exactly  what  was  meant 
by  "having  a  temperament,"  or  the  "needs  of  the  artistic 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  213 

temperament"  except  vaguely  that  it  was  a  license  to  do 
flighty  things  that  all  reasonable  Chicago  folk  would  deplore. 

To-night  the  Hawaiian  was  maintaining  his  favorite  the- 
sis, —  that  the  first  duty  of  the  artist  was  to  himself,  to  pre- 
serve and  make  effective  his  "temperament."  Modern  life, 
especially  in  America,  he  held,  made  bourgeois  of  us  all.  The 
inevitable  ruin  of  the  artist  was  to  attempt  to  live  according 
to  the  bourgeois  ideal  of  morality.  (That  was  another  term 
which  puzzled  Milly  always,  —  bourgeois.  These  young 
artists  used  it  with  infinite  contempt,  and  yet  she  concluded 
shrewdly  that  the  people  she  had  known  best  and  respected 
all  her  life  would  have  to  come  under  this  anathema.  To  be 
healthy  and  normal,  to  pay  one's  bills  and  be  true  to  husband 
or  wife,  was  to  be  just  bourgeois.  According  to  that  standard 
Jack  was  bourgeois,  she  supposed,  and  she  was  glad  of  it,  and 
yet  a  little  afraid  at  the  same  time,  because  it  seemed  to 
mark  him  out  for  artistic  ineptitude.)  But  the  fat  man  was 
talking  heatedly,  and  Milly  was  listening. 

"In  our  society  artists  have  no  chance  to  experiment  in 
life,  to  perfect  their  natures  untrammelled  by  public  opinion, 
as  the  artists  of  old  did."  (And  he  cited  a  lot  of  names, 
beginning,  of  course,  with  Benvenuto  and  including  Goethe, 
but  Milly  was  not  interested  in  these  historical  cases.  It 
was  the  immediate  application  of  the  principle  she  was  wait- 
ing for.) 

"In  those  days,"  some  one  said,  "artists  were  content  to 
live  in  their  own  class  like  actors  and  had  no  social  ambi- 
tions." 

"And  much  better  for  them,  too!"  the  Honolulu  man 
put  in. 


214  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"How  about  Leonardo  and  Petrarch?"  the  great  artist 
queried  from  his  end  of  the  table,  and  then  for  a  few  moments 
the  conversation  got  off  into  the  question  of  the  social  posi- 
tion of  artists  in  the  renaissance  and  their  relation  to  their 
patrons,  which  bored  Milly,  but  the  Hawaiian  brought  it 
back  to  his  point. 

"So  that's  why  we  have  no  real  creators  to-day  in  any  of 
the  arts,"  he  asserted.  "They're  merely  a  lot  of  little  citi- 
zens who  daub  canvass  to  support  a  wife  and  a  respectable 
house  or  pay  the  butcher's  bill  with  fluffy  stories  about  silly 
women  and  impossible  heroes."  (This,  Milly  thought, 
was  a  raw  stab  at  young  Roberts.  She  wondered  how  men 
could  say  such  things  to  one  another  and  still  remain 
friends.)  "They  have  bank-accounts  and  go  to  dinner- 
parties." 

To  which  the  story-teller  retorted  when  he  got  his  chance :  — 

"What  you  fellows  always  mean  by  ' living'  is  messing 
around  with  some  woman  who  isn't  your  own  wife.  A  good 
many  of  our  modern  citizens  manage  to  live  their  own  lives 
that  way,  and  what  does  it  do  for  them?" 

Milly  approved. 

"That's  just  the  trouble :  society  damns  them  and  finishes 
them  if  they  don't  behave  like  proper  bourgeois.  Take  the 

case  of "  and  he  cited  an  instance  of  a  young  artist  who 

was  having  much  newspaper  notoriety  over  his  passional 
experiments.  "Women  kill  art,  anyway,"  he  concluded 
with  a  growl. 

Thereat  Roberts'  southern  blood  was  touched,  and  he 
launched  into  a  glowing  sentimental  eulogy  of  Woman  as 
the  Inspirer  of  Men  towards  the  Noblest  Things,  and  in- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  215 

cidentally  of  the  peace  and  the  purity  of  marriage.  Milly 
liked  what  he  said,  although  it  seemed  to  her  rather  florid 
in  phrasing,  and  she  felt  an  instinctive  hostility  towards  the 
fat  gentleman  from  Honolulu,  whom  she  suspected  of  dis- 
gusting immorality.  (Later  in  New  York  she  was  astonished 
to  learn  that  Roberts  had  had  a  very  scandalous  divorce  from 
a  wife,  while  the  Hawaiian  lived  a  laborious  and  apparently 
upright  life,  supporting  a  mother,  as  a  newspaper  correspond- 
ent. She  learned  then  that  men's  expressed  views  had  very 
little  to  do  with  their  conduct,  and  that  an  ideal  was  often 
merely  the  sentimental  reaction  from  experience.) 

Just  as  Milly,  thinking  she  heard  Virginia  cry  in  the  room 
above,  slipped  away  from  the  table  some  one  said,  — 

"A  man  who  has  anything  to  do  in  the  world  will  never 
let  a  woman  stand  in  his  way.  If  he  does,  he  is  soft,  and 
that's  the  end  of  him." 

Milly  felt  moved  to  put  a  word  in  here  in  behalf  of  her 
sex,  but  the  child's  cry  came  more  loudly  and  as  she  left 
she  heard  her  husband  ask  mildly,  — 

"And  how  about  the  children?" 

"Oh,  the  kids  —  that's  woman's  business,"  the  fat  man 
replied  carelessly.  "Pass  the  cigarettes,  will  you,"  and 
the  talk  went  off  somewhere  else.  .  .  . 

Children  were  not  all  " woman's  business,"  Milly  felt  in- 
dignantly. She  had  surprised  her  pretty  little  maid  Yvonne 
in  a  lonely  lane  one  moonlight  night,  in  company  with  a  tall 
man,  who  did  not  look  like  a  Breton.  She  had  reported  the 
fact  to  her  husband,  with  her  suspicions  as  to  the  tall  man, 
observing, — "  Men  are  so  horrid  ! "  to  which  Jack  had  merely 
laughed  easily.  She  had  scolded  him  for  his  frivolity,  also 


216  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

scolded  Yvonne,  who  cried,  yet  somehow  seemed  to  smile 
through  her  tears. 

To-night  when  her  husband  came  up  for  bed,  she  asked 
seriously,  — 

"  You  don't  believe  all  that  stuff  Steve  Belchers  was  saying, 
do  you?" 

" What  stuff?" 

"  About  artists  and  women." 

Bragdon  yawned  and  laughed.  Milly  came  close  to  him 
and  put  her  arm  about  his  neck. 

"You  don't  feel  that  your  temperament  is  ruined  by 
marriage,  do  you  ?  " 

"Never  knew  I  had  one  before,"  he  replied  jokingly. 

"Because  you  know  if  you  ever  want  your  freedom,  you 
can  have  it." 

"Thanks." 

"If  you  need  that  sort  of  experience,  I  shan't  stand  in 
your  way,"  she  concluded  in  a  heroic  burst.  .  .  . 

Nevertheless  she  was  glad  that  her  husband  had  shown  no 
symptoms  hitherto  of  this  dangerous  "temperament"  and 
was  content  to  be  as  bourgeois  as  the  best.  All  the  time  there 
was  growing  in  her  a  sense  of  sex  distinction,  and  a  dislike, 
or  rather  disapproval,  of  men  as  a  whole.  God,  she  was  con- 
vinced, as  the  Southerner  had  said,  had  meant  the  perfect 
type  to  be  Woman,  rather  than  Man. 


IX 

THE   PARDON 

ONE  day  the  noisy  chatter  at  the  midday  meal  was  inter- 
rupted by  the  terrific  splutter  and  throbbing  of  a  motor-car. 
Those  were  still  the  days  when  touring  cars  with  strangely 
clad  occupants  were  less  familiar,  even  on  French  roads,  than 
they  have  since  become,  and  the  machines  announced  them- 
selves from  afar  by  their  ponderous  groans.  Very  few  cars, 
indeed,  got  down  to  this  secluded  Brittany  village  which  was 
reached  by  only  one  road  of  the  third  class  that  penetrated 
the  little  peninsula  from  Morlaix,  a  number  of  miles  away  to 
the  north. 

So  every  one  left  the  table  and  crowded  to  the  terrace 
wall  to  observe  the  arrivals.  As  a  dusty,  becapped  and 
begoggled  figure  got  down  from  the  seat  beside  the  driver, 
Milly  exclaimed  excitedly,  "Why,  it's  Roy  Gilbert!"  and 
ran  towards  the  courtyard.  The  car  finally  disgorged  Nettie 
Gilbert  and  her  uninteresting  fourteen-year-old  daugh- 
ter. They  came  in  for  luncheon,  and  their  story  was  soon 
told.  Paris  was  hot,  and  in  despair  of  dispelling  Roy's 
thickening  ennui  at  his  European  exile,  which  threatened 
to  terminate  their  trip,  Mrs.  Gilbert  had  induced  her  husband 
to  charter  the  car  for  a  tour  of  Normandy  and  Brittany. 
Having  done  all  the  north-coast  watering-places  and  remem- 
bering that  the  Bragdons  were  staying  at  this  little  place 
"with  a  funny  name,"  they  had  decided  to  make  them  a  call. 

217 


218  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Roy  Gilbert  ate  copiously  and  denounced  hotels,  food,  and 
the  people,  while  Milly  and  Nettie  Gilbert  talked  Chicago 
and  Baby. 

"We  want  to  see  a  l  Pat -don,'"  Mrs.  Gilbert  announced  at 
last,  "and  we've  come  to  take  you  and  your  husband  with 
us." 

It  was  the  season  of  that  famous  Brittany  festival,  so 
Baedeker  said,  and  they  had  seen  some  evidences  of  it  in  the 
little  villages  through  which  they  had  passed.  Did  Milly 
know  of  a  good  one?  The  Gilberts  were  as  aesthetically 
lazy  as  they  were  weak  in  French,  and  of  course  quite  help- 
less in  Brittany,  whose  peasants  seemed  to  them  dirty  baboons 
with  a  monkey  language.  Milly  quickly  recalled  that  some 
of  the  artists  had  been  talking  of  the  famous  Pardon  at 
Poldau,  a  little  fisher-settlement  at  the  extreme  tip  of  the 
western  coast,  where  the  costumes  were  said  to  be  peculiarly 
rich  and  quaint.  She  had  wanted  to  visit  it  with  Jack,  but 
he  had  become  so  much  absorbed  in  his  new  picture  that 
they  had  given  up  the  idea.  And  there  was  Baby  —  she 
did  not  like  to  leave  her. 

"Yvonne  will  do  all  right,"  her  husband  urged.  "Better 
take  the  chance  —  I'll  look  after  Virgie." 

So  after  much  encouragement,  though  with  misgivings, 
Milly  consented  to  accompany  the  Gilberts  in  their  car  for 
a  couple  of  days  and  show  them  the  glories  of  the  Brittany 
countryside. 

"I  owe  Nettie  so  much,"  she  explained  privately  to  her 
husband,  by  way  of  apology.  "I  can't  very  well  refuse  — 
and  they  are  so  helpless,  poor  dears  !" 

"You'll  have  a  bully  time,"   he  replied  encouragingly. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  219 

"Don't  worry  about  anything.     I'll  watch  Yvonne  like  a 

cat." 

"And  telegraph  me  instantly  if  anything  goes  wrong." 
"Of  course.  .  .  .     Don't  hurry  back  if  they  should  want 

you  to  go  farther.     It'll  be  good  for  you." 
"Oh,  not  more  than  two  days  —  I  couldn't." 
She  did  not  give  a  thought  to  the  Russian  woman,  or  to 

anything  but  the  baby.     (Afterwards  she  became  convinced 

that  the  whole  plan  had  been  arranged  with  skilful  prescience 

by  the  wicked  Baroness  in  order  that  she  might  have  the 

artist  to  herself  these  few  days.)  .  .  . 

The  departure  in  the  freshness  of  the  August  morning  was 
a  great  event.  Every  one  in  the  hotel,  including  the  patron 
in  his  cook's  white  costume,  the  patronne,  the  grinning  ape 
of  a  waiter,  all  the  artists,  and  hah7  the  village  gathered  to 
watch  the  motor  get  under  way.  The  lumbering  ark  of  a 
car  was  laden  with  bags  and  trunks  and  bundles,  for  the  Ameri- 
cans meant  to  be  comfortable.  Then  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gilbert, 
their  natural  amplitude  swollen  by  their  dust-coats,  goggles, 
and  veils,  mounted  with  stately  complacency  to  their  re- 
spective seats,  and  Milly  tucked  herself  into  a  corner.  Then 
the  ratlike  French  chauffeur  attempted  to  crank  the  engine, 
and  perspiring,  red  in  the  face,  spluttering  with  oaths,  made 
many  desperate  efforts  to  arouse  his  monster.  There  were 
sympathetic  murmurs  from  the  audience.  "Now  he's  got 
her  —  ah  —  oh  —  no!  Hang  to  it  Pierrot,  etc."  Finally 
Pierre  exploded  hi  a  tragic  tirade  to  his  employer,  who  sat 
stolidly  through  all  the  rumpus,  merely  asking  at  the  end, 
"What's  he  saying,  Milly?" 


220  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"He  can  do  nothing  with  the  cursed  beast,"  Milly  abridged. 

" That's  evident,"  Gilbert  remarked  with  cynical  satis- 
faction. 

"He  thinks  it's  the  water;  he  warned  you  not  to  come 
down  here." 

It  seemed  as  if  Milly's  little  trip  was  not  to  come  off,  after 
all,  when  Bragdon,  who  had  picked  up  some  knowledge  of 
the  new  machines  in  his  earlier  single  state,  tipped  up  the  hood 
and  dove  for  the  carburetor.  After  a  time  he  signalled  to 
the  Hawaiian  to  work  the  crank,  and  then  with  a  whir,  a 
rumble,  at  last  a  clear  bellow,  the  monster  responded,  trem- 
bled, turned  its  snout  up  the  narrow  road,  and  disappeared. 
Milly  threw  a  kiss  to  her  husband,  who  waved  his  hat  in 
answer.  He  had  saved  the  day,  and  she  was  proud  of  him. 

They  had  a  wonderful  time,  in  spite  of  Pierre  and  his 
balky  car,  bowling  along  the  winding,  leafy  roads  not  far 
from  the  sea,  through  little  gray  stone  villages  whose  inhab- 
itants turned  out  en  masse,  including  children  and  animals,  to 
witness  their  stately  progress  of  ten  miles  an  hour.  They 
got  stuck  once  in  a  ford  and  had  to  be  fished  out  with  three 
yoke  of  cream-colored  bulls  and  a  long  ship's  rope.  That 
was  about  noon,  and  they  decided  to  lunch  at  the  next  inn, 
though  it  did  not  look  inviting.  However,  Milly's  French 
coaxed  a  tolerable  meal  from  the  fat  housewife  whom  they 
discovered  cleaning  fish  in  the  kitchen,  and  even  the  stodgy 
Roy  mellowed  under  the  influence  of  fresh  fish  and  a  drink- 
able bottle  of  wine  which  he  and  Milly  discovered  somewhere. 

That  evening,  without  further  mishap,  they  rumbled  into 
the  hamlet  of  Poldau.  For  the  last  hour  they  had  seen 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  221 

signs  of  the  coming  fete.  All  the  natives,  arrayed  in  their 
best  clothes,  were  drifting  westward  to  the  rocky  cape,  where, 
perched  on  a  lonely  cliff,  was  the  tiny  chapel,  "Our  Lady  of 
the  Guard,"  which  was  the  scene  of  the  Pardon  on  the  mor- 
row. Before  they  entered  Poldau  night  had  fallen,  and  the 
long  yellow  beams  from  the  powerful  Phare  glanced  out 
across  the  sullen  waters  and  the  level  land.  It  was  beneath 
this  lofty  lighthouse  they  slept,  in  a  clean,  bare  little  inn. 
Milly,  lying  in  her  cushiony  bed,  could  hear  the  waves  grum- 
bling around  the  rocks,  and  watch  the  sweep  of  that  golden 
beam  of  light,  —  speaking  to  the  distant  passers-by  upon  the 
Atlantic,  warning  them  of  the  dangers  of  this  treacherous 
coast.  .  .  . 

It  was  the  first  time  she  had  been  separated  from  her 
family,  and  she  lay  awake  long  hours,  restless  and  sleepless, 
wondering  whether  Yvonne  would  remember  to  pull  up  the 
extra  blanket  over  Virginia  before  the  early  morning  damp- 
ness. And  she  thought  about  her  husband,  fleetingly,  con- 
trasting him  with  Roy  Gilbert,  who  seemed  to  have  grown 
heavier  in  mind  as  well  as  in  person  these  last  years.  Roy 
was  surely  what  the  artists  called  bourgeois,  but  she  liked  him 
—  he  was  so  kind  and  good  to  Nettie.  She  felt  at  home, 
getting  back  to  the  familiar  bourgeois  atmosphere  of  the 
Gilberts,  where  life  was  made  easy  and  comfortable,  and 
you  knew  every  idea  any  one  would  advance  before  the 
words  were  half  spoken.  .  .  . 

Milly  was  wakened  before  dawn  by  the  sound  of  a  drunken 
quarrel  beneath  her  window.  Some  Breton  evidently  had 
begun  to  celebrate  the  Pardon  too  soon;  a  shrill  woman's 
voice  broke  the  silence  with  unintelligible  reproaches.  There 


222  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

was  the  sound  of  blows,  of  crashing  glass,  a  scuffle,  sobs,  — 
then  silence,  broken  now  and  again  by  fresh  sobs.  Ah, 
those  men,  —  men !  .  .  .  The  lamp  in  the  Phare  went 
out :  it  was  dawn.  Milly  fell  into  a  broken  sleep. 

The  Pardon  itself,  they  all  agreed,  was  wonderfully  impres- 
sive and  picturesque,  as  Baedeker  had  promised.  The  little 
chapel  on  the  cliffs  was  stuffed  with  kneeling  women  in  their 
stiff,  starched  coifs  and  heavy  velvet-trimmed  skirts.  The 
men,  slinking  up  sheepishly,  as  always  to  religious  ceremonies, 
fell  on  their  knees  on  the  rocky  ground  all  about  the  chapel 
when  the  priests  advanced  with  the  sacred  emblems,  and 
prayed  vigorously  with  tight-closed  eyes.  The  strangers, 
under  the  guidance  of  the  chauffeur,  who  maintained  a  super- 
cilious disdain  for  these  "stupid  Brittany  pigs,"  took  their 
position  at  the  apex  of  the  cliff,  where  they  could  see  every- 
thing to  advantage.  The  Gilbert  girl  kodaked  the  kneeling 
throng,  which  distressed  Milly;  she  thought  the  people 
might  resent  it,  but  they  paid  no  attention  to  the  Americans. 

Her  own  eyes  were  filled  with  unaccountable  tears.  The 
symbols  of  the  Catholic  religion  always  affected  her  in  this 
way;  while  Nettie  Gilbert  stared  rather  disapprovingly  at 
the  superstitious  ceremony.  In  spite  of  its  quaint  medi- 
sevalism,  it  seemed  to  Milly  quite  human,  —  the  gathering 
together  of  suffering,  sinning  human  beings  around  the  gray 
chapel  on  the  storm-beaten  coast  —  "  Our  Lady  of  the  Guard  " 
—  their  prayers,  the  absolution  granted  by  the  robed  priests, 
and  the  going  forth  to  another  year  of  trials  and  temptations, 
efforts  and  sins.  .  .  .  Just  below  the  chapel,  withdrawn 
only  a  few  feet  from  the  religious  ceremony,  was  a  cluster  of 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  223 

tents,  sheltering  hurdy-gurdys,  merry-go-rounds,  cook-shops, 
and  cider  —  plenty  of  cider.  A  few  indifferent  males,  be- 
decked in  their  short  coats  brightly  trimmed  with  yellow 
braid,  were  already  feasting,  even  while  the  host  was  being 
elevated  above  the  kneeling  throng.  But  most  of  the  people, 
with  reverently  bent  heads  and  murmuring  lips,  received  the 
sacrament,  kneeling  around  the  gray  chapel.  It  was  solemn 
and  moving,  Milly  thought,  and  she  wished  that  Jack  might 
have  had  the  experience.  .  .  . 

"Baedeker  says,"  Roy  Gilbert  pronounced  in  her  ear,  in 
the  midst  of  the  ceremony,  "that  there  must  be  Spanish 
blood  among  these  people  because  their  costumes  show  Span- 
ish designs.  .  .  .  They  all  look  like  Irish  or  monkeys  to 
me." 

Milly  smiled  responsively  to  him. 

"The  costumes  are  lovely,  aren't  they?" 

The  crowd  of  women  worshippers  had  burst  forth  from  the 
chapel :  there  was  a  swarm  of  white  and  black  figures  over 
the  rocky  headland.  The  faces  beneath  the  broad  white 
caps  did  not  seem  to  Milly  monkey  like.  They  were  weather- 
beaten  and  bronzed  like  their  coast,  but  eager  and  smiling, 
and  some  of  the  younger  ones  quite  bonny  and  sweet.  And 
the  young  men  sidled  up  to  the  young  women  here  as  else- 
where in  the  world.  Milly  was  full  of  the  spirit  of  forgive- 
ness that  the  ceremony  had  taught :  men  and  women  must 
mutually  forgive  and  strive  to  do  better.  She  said  this  to 
Nettie  Gilbert,  who  seemed  only  moderately  impressed  with 
the  semi-pagan  scene.  • 

They  went  down  the  hill  to  the  booths,  which  were  already 
thronged  with  a  noisy  crowd  of  eating  and  drinking  peasants, 


224  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

and  straightway  became  too  evil-smelling  for  the  Ameri- 
cans. 

"If  the  ladies  like  this  barbaric  show,"  the  chauffeur  confided 
to  Gilbert,  "  there  is  an  even  larger  one  to  be  seen  a  day's 
run  farther  north  on  the  coast  at  the  celebrated  shrine  of 
Ste.  Anne  de  Beaupre*." 

So  they  went  on  that  afternoon  to  "the  other  show,"  as 
Gilbert  expressed  it.  Milly's  doubts  were  quickly  over- 
borne :  they  must  have  her  longer  now  that  she  was  with 
them ;  she  could  return  any  time  if  necessary  by  rail ;  they 
would  telegraph  that  evening,  etc.  And  they  set  forth  hope- 
fully again  in  search  of  the  picturesque.  The  larger  pardon 
proved  disappointing,  less  religious  and  characteristic,  more 
like  a  country  fair.  The  next  afternoon  they  meant  to  re- 
turn to  Klerac,  in  time  for  dinner,  but  the  car  balked 
and  finally  gave  out  altogether.  All  Pierre's  ingenuity,  as 
well  as  his  heartfelt  curses,  availed  nothing,  and  they  had 
to  abandon  it.  They  drove  to  the  nearest  railroad  station, 
which  proved  to  be  many  kilometres  distant,  and  waited 
there  half  a  day  for  a  train. 

Milly  left  the  Gilberts  at  Morlaix.  They  were  bound  for 
Paris,  and  judging  from  Roy  Gilbert's  remarks  they  would 
shortly  be  on  their  way  back  to  America  and  "some  decent 
living."  Four  months  of  Europe  and  strange  beds  was  all  he 
could  endure  at  a  stretch.  Milly  laughed  at  his  complaints. 
The  way  the  rich  spent  their  money  had  always  seemed  to  her 
a  little  stupid.  If  she  and  Jack  had  the  Gilberts'  money! 
She  mused  of  all  the  exciting  freedom  they  could  get  out  of 
it,  while  the  little  one-horse  trap  she  had  hired  at  the  station 
rattled  her  over  the  hard  road  towards  Klerac. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  225 

She  had  enjoyed  her  trip  greatly,  yet  after  the  five  days' 
absence  she  was  eager  to  get  back  and  see  her  child.  She 
even  looked  forward  to  the  noisy  Hotel  du  Passage,  with  its 
cluttered  table  of  talkative  artists  and  her  own  two  small 
rooms.  As  she  had  said  to  Nettie  Gilbert,  "I'm  something 
of  a  cat  and  like  my  own  garret  best,"  even  if  it  were  a  travel- 
ler's garret.  And  though  she  had  liked  being  with  the  Gil- 
berts, going  over  old  Chicago  times  with  Nettie,  and  had 
enjoyed  the  car  and  the  luxurious,  easy  way  of  travelling, 
she  suspected  that  long  contact  with  these  good  people 
would  be  boresome.  They  were  so  persistently  occupied 
with  how  they  should  sleep  and  eat,  with  all  their  multi- 
tudinous contrivances  for  comfort,  with  fear  of  the  dust  or 
of  getting  tired,  that  they  had  little  energy  for  other  things. 
She  decided  that  the  Gilbert  sort  made  a  fetich  of  comfort 
and  missed  most  of  the  landscape  of  life  in  their  excessive 
attention  to  the  roadbed.  Perhaps  that  was  what  clever 
folk  meant  by  being  bourgeois.  If  so,  she  hoped  that  she 
should  never  be  bourgeois  to  the  extent  the  Gilberts  were. 

Thus  Milly,  in  a  properly  contented  frame  of  mind,  urged 
the  peasant  lad  to  whip  up  his  lazy  pony  and  get  her  more 
quickly  home  to  her  family. 


THE   PAINTED   FACE 

THERE  was  a  midsummer  silence  about  the  hotel  in  the 
early  afternoon  when  Milly  arrived.  Yvonne,  so  the  pa- 
tronne  informed  her,  had  taken  the  baby  to  the  dunes,  and 
thither  Milly,  without  stopping  to  change  her  dusty  dress, 
set  out  to  find  her.  She  descried  her  little  Brittany  maid 
on  the  sands  safely  above  tide-water,  and  by  her  side  a 
small  white  bundle  that  made  Milly's  heart  beat  faster. 

Virginia  received  her  returned  mother  with  disappointing 
indifference,  more  concerned  for  the  moment  in  the  depth 
of  the  excavation  into  the  sand  which  her  nurse  was  making 
for  her  benefit.  Milly  covered  her  with  kisses,  nevertheless, 
while  Yvonne  explained  that  all  had  gone  well,  "tres,  tres 
Men,  Madame."  Bebe,  it  seemed,  had  slept  and  eaten  as  a 
celestial  bebe  should.  They  were  looking  for  Madame  yes- 
terday, but  Monsieur  had  not  been  disturbed  even  before 
the  depeche  arrived.  .  .  .  And  Monsieur  was  at  his  work  as 
usual  at  the  other  madame's  manoir. 

After  a  time  Milly,  wearied  of  bestowing  unreciprocated 
caresses  upon  her  daughter,  left  her  to  the  mystery  of  the 
hole  in  the  sand  and  sauntered  up  the  beach.  Dotted  here 
and  there  in  the  sunlight  at  favorable  points  along  the  dunes 
were  the  broad  umbrellas  of  the  artists,  who  were  doubtless 
all  busily  engaged  in  trying  to  transfer  a  bit  of  the  dazzling 

226 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  227 

sunlight  and  dancing  purple  sea  to  their  little  squares  of 
canvases.  To  Milly  this  ceaseless  effort  to  comment  on 
nature  had  something  of  the  ridiculous,  —  perhaps  super- 
erogatory would  be  a  better  word.  It  was  so  much  pleasanter 
to  look  at  the  landscape,  and  easier  !  Offshore  the  dun- 
colored  sails  of  the  fishing  fleet  dipped  and  fluttered  where 
the  sturdy  men  of  Douarnenez  were  engaged  in  their  task  of 
getting  the  herring  from  the  sea.  That  seemed  to  Milly 
more  real  and  important  in  a  world  of  fact.  Such  a  view 
betrayed  the  bourgeois  in  her,  she  suspected,  but  according 
to  the  Hawaiian  all  women  were  bourgeois  at  heart. 

After  a  time  her  feet  turned  into  one  of  the  lanes,  and  she 
followed  unconsciously  the  well-known  path  until  the  gray 
wall  of  the  ruined  manoir  came  in  sight.  She  paused  for  a 
moment  —  she  had  not  meant  to  go  there  —  then  impul- 
sively went  forward,  crossed  the  empty  courtyard,  and  find- 
ing the  garden  door  ajar  pushed  it  open.  The  drowsy  mid- 
summer silence  seemed  to  possess  both  house  and  garden. 
The  place  was  deserted.  In  the  corner  stood  the  painter's 
large  canvas  on  the  easel,  with  the  brushes  and  palette  on  the 
bench  by  its  side,  as  if  just  abandoned,  and  one  of  Madame 
Saratoff's  large  hats  of  coarse  straw. 

Milly  went  over  and  examined  the  picture.  It  was  almost 
finished,  in  that  last  stage  where  the  artist  can  play  with  his 
creation,  fondly  touching  and  perfecting  infinitesimal  de- 
tails, knowing  that  the  thing  has  really  been  "pulled  off." 
And  it  was  triumphantly  done  !  Even  to  Milly's  untutored 
eyes,  the  triumph  of  it  was  indubitable.  There  the  Russian 
stood  on  her  thin,  lithe  haunches,  her  head  tipped  a  little 
back  disdainfully  as  in  life,  the  open  mouth  about  to  emit 


228  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

some  cold  brutality,  the  long  curving  lip  daringly  drawn  up 
over  the  teeth,  —  the  look  of  "one  who  eats  what  she  wants, " 
as  she  herself  had  said  one  day.  Milly  shuddered  before 
the  insolence  of  the  painted  face.  She  felt  that  this  was  one 
of  the  few  creatures  on  the  earth  whom  she  feared  and  hated. 
Instinctively  she  made  a  gesture  as  if  she  would  deface  the 
portrait.  The  face  seemed  to  answer  her  with  a  sneer,  — 
"Well,  and  if  you  did,  what  good  would  that  do  ?  Would  he 
love  you  any  more  for  that  ?"  it  said,  and  she  paused. 

Even  the  background  and  all  the  details  were  admirably 
conceived  and  rendered,  —  the  crumbling,  lichened  wall,  in 
cold  gray,  with  the  gnarled  root  of  the  creeper  and  the  wreath 
of  purple  blossoms,  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  pallor  of  the  face 
and  the  bold  assurance  of  the  figure.  The  light  fell  across 
the  canvas,  leading  down  to  a  slab  of  vivid  purple  water  in 
the  far  distance.  There  was  nothing  pretty  or  affected  or 
conventional  about  the  painting :  it  was  life  caught  and 
rendered  with  the  true  boldness  of  actuality.  Milly,  gazing 
in  fascination  at  the  creation  of  line  and  color  and  light, 
realized  that  here  was  the  work  of  a  new  man,  totally  un- 
known to  her.  Its  maker  was  no  youthful  pupil,  stumbling 
at  his  set  task.  No  dabbler,  this  one,  no  trivial  illustrator 
or  petty  drawing-room  amuser,  but  a  man  who  had  found 
within  himself  something  long  sought  for.  She  shuddered 
and  turned  away.  So  that  was  what  it  was  to  be  an  Artist ! 
She  understood,  and  she  hated  it,  —  Art  and  all  the  tribe  of 
artists  big  and  little.  In  this  strange  woman,  whom  chance 
had  put  in  his  way,  he  had  seen  what  she  had  not  noticed, 
and  he  had  projected  what  he  saw.  He  was  able  to  divine 
the  soul  of  things  beneath  their  superficial  appearance,  and  he 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  229 

was  able,  exultantly,  to  project  in  material  form  that  hidden 
meaning  for  others  to  see  and  understand,  if  they  would. 
And  that  was  what  an  artist,  a  real  artist,  was  for. 

Naturally  Milly  did  not  analyze  closely  her  own  troubled 
mind.  Here  was  plain  evidence  of  her  husband's  being  in 
which  she  no  longer  had  the  smallest  share.  She  had  been 
slightly  jealous,  more  than  she  would  admit,  that  other  time 
at  the  beginning  of  the  portrait  because  of  Jack's  absorption 
in  his  subject  and  his  work.  Her  egotism  had  been  wounded. 
But  that  was  trifling  compared  with  the  present  feeling.  In 
this  completed  creation  she  no  more  existed  than  the  fly 
which  rested  for  a  moment  upon  the  painted  canvas.  His 
creation  had  nothing  whatsoever  to  do  with  her.  And  some- 
thing deeper  than  egotism,  far  deeper  than  jealousy,  rose 
from  the  depths  of  her  nature  in  antagonism —  a  sex-antago- 
nism to  the  whole  affair.  Her  husband  had  a  new  mistress  — 
not  necessarily  the  Russian  woman,  for  that  idea  had  not  yet 
come  to  her  —  but  his  Art.  And  he  might  follow  this  mis- 
tress whither  she  beckoned,  —  to  poverty,  defeat,  or  victory, 
—  unmindful  of  her  and  her  child,  forgetting  them  like  idle 
memories  in  the  pursuit  of  his  blind  purpose.  It  was  a 
force  inimical  to  her  and  antagonistic  to  all  orderly  living, 
as  the  Hawaiian  had  said,  —  a  demonic  force  which  rises 
in  the  midst  of  society  to  give  the  lie  to  all  the  pretences  men 
make  to  themselves  and  call  "  civilization." 

Milly  hated  it,  instinctively.  Jack  must  paint  no  more 
such  pictures  for  love  or  for  money,  if  their  life  were  not  to 
end  in  disaster.  Did  he  know  what  he  had  done  with  this 
Russian  woman  ?  .  .  .  Where  were  they,  anyway  ? 

She  looked  up  at  the  silent  manoir.    The  green  blinds  were 


230  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

drawn  to  shut  out  the  western  sun.  Milly  knew  the  long, 
high  room  with  its  timbered  ceiling  which  Madame  Saratoff 
had  restored  and  furnished  in  English  style,  and  where,  for 
the  most  part,  she  lived.  The  two  were  there  together  now 
—  she  was  sure  of  it.  A  new  and  fiercer  emotion  swept 
Milly  towards  the  house :  she  would  discover  them  in  their 
shame,  in  their  cruel  selfishness.  But  she  stopped  on  the 
stairs,  suffocated  by  her  passion.  She  felt  their  presence  just 
above  her  with  a  physical  sense  of  pain,  but  she  lacked  the 
strength  to  go  forward.  A  terrible  sense  of  weakness  in 
face  of  her  defeat  made  her  tremble.  Her  heart  was  broken, 
she  said ;  what  mattered  it  now  what  they  did.  She  had  no 
doubts :  all  was  revealed  as  if  she  saw  them  in  each  other's 
arms.  No  man  could  have  discovered  the  secret  of  a  woman's 
inmost  being,  if  she  had  not  voluntarily  yielded  to  him  the 
key.  .  .  . 

After  a  time  she  left  the  place,  slipped  out  through  the 
garden-gate  into  the  green  field  behind  the  manoir  and  wan- 
dered unseeingly  along  the  hedge,  and  at  length  flung  her- 
self down  on  the  ground,  sobbing.  She  was  alone,  so  utterly 
alone.  The  one  in  whose  hands  she  had  put  her  whole  life 
had  betrayed  her  and  deserted  her.  It  was  worse  than  death. 
They  were  there  in  that  dim,  silent  room,  in  the  utmost  in- 
timacy, and  she  lay  here  outside,  robbed  and  abandoned.  ... 
She  rose  to  get  farther  away  from  the  place,  when  she  heard 
steps  approaching  on  the  other  side  of  the  hedge.  Kneeling 
close  to  the  ground,  she  could  see  through  the  thick  roots  of 
the  hedge  and  watch  the  two  as  they  came  up  the  lane.  It 
was  her  husband  and  the  Russian  woman.  They  were  not 
closeted  in  the  house.  She  had  been  wrong.  They  had  been 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  231 

for  a  stroll  after  his  work,  and  were  coming  back  now  for 
their  tea,  silently  and  companionably,  side  by  side.  For  the 
merest  moment  Milly  had  a  sense  of  relief :  it  might  not  be 
true  what  her  heart  had  said,  after  all.  But  almost  at  once 
she  knew  that  it  made  no  difference  just  what  their  relations 
were  or  had  been. 

She  could  read  their  faces  as  they  came  slowly  towards 
her,  —  the  Russian  woman's  slanting  glance  from  covered 
eyes  of  hateful  content  as  she  looked  at  the  artist.  The 
"one  who  eats  what  she  wants!"  .  .  .  They  walked  very 
slowly,  as  if  full  of  thoughts  and  weary  with  the  day.  Brag- 
don's  head  was  high,  his  glance  fell  far  off  across  the  fields, 
his  mind  intent  on  something  within,  his  brow  slightly  con- 
tracted as  in  stern  resolve.  He  was  pale,  and  he  seemed  to  his 
wife  older,  much  older  than  she  remembered.  He  was  a  man, 
not  the  careless  boy  she  had  married  so  many,  many  years 
ago,  and  her  heart  tightened  anew  with  intolerable  pain.  .  .  . 
His  glance  fell  to  the  expectant  face  of  his  companion,  and 
both  smiled  with  profound  intimacy  as  at  a  meeting  where 
words  are  needless.  .  .  .  Milly's  hand  grasped  the  prickly 
vines  of  the  hedge,  and  she  held  herself  still  until  they  had 
passed.  No,  it  made  no  difference  to  her  now  what  they 
thought  or  did.  She  knew. 

She  fled.  She  heard  her  name  faintly  through  the  din  of 
rushing  blood  hi  her  ears,  but  she  stumbled  across  the  field 
out  into  the  lane,  towards  the  sea.  There  followed  the  most 
atrocious  hour  Milly  was  ever  to  know  in  her  life,  while  she 
wandered  aimlessly  to  and  fro  on  the  lonely  beach.  Her 
marriage  was  over  —  that  thought  returned  like  a  mournful 
chant  in  the  storm  of  blind  feeling.  Latterly  she  had  come 


232  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

to  take  her  husband  as  a  matter  of  course,  as  a  part  of  the 
married  life  of  a  woman.  Though  she  had  said  to  Nettie 
Gilbert,  "I'm  as  much  in  love  with  Jack  as  when  I  married 
him,"  and  believed  it,  she  hadn't  been.  But  now  that 
another  had  dared  to  take  her  husband  from  her,  if  only 
for  a  few  days  or  hours,  she  was  outraged.  She  persistently 
focussed  her  whole  anguish  upon  this  foreign  creature  with 
her  vampire  mouth,  though  she  might  know  in  the  depth  of 
her  heart  that  her  quarrel  was  not  with  the  Russian  or  any 
woman,  but  with  fate.  .  .  .  She  kept  repeating  to  herself, 
—  "He  doesn't  love  me  any  longer.  He  loves  her — 'her! 
.  .  .  He  will  be  hers  now  —  for  a  time.  They  are  all 
like  that,  —  artists.  It's  bourgeois  to  love  one  woman  al- 
ways." So  Womanhood  from  the  beginning  of  time  seemed 
outraged  hi  her  person. 

Had  she  not  joyfully  "given  up  everything  for  him,"  as 
all  women  did  for  the  men  they  loved  ?  (Even  her  worldly 
prospects  when  she  married  the  penniless  artist  began  to 
seem  to  her  brighter  than  they  really  had  been.)  Had  she 
not,  at  any  rate,  given  herself  to  him,  first,  and  always,  and 
only?  And  borne  him  a  child  in  pain  and  danger?  What 
more  could  woman  do?  He  was  her  debtor  for  eternity, 
as  every  man  was  to  the  woman  who  gave  herself  to  him. 
And  four  years  had  barely  passed  before  another  one  plucked 
him  easily  from  her  side  !  .  .  .  Women  were  cheated  always 
in  the  game  of  life  because  of  their  hearts,  fated  unfairly 
in  the  primal  scheme  of  things.  Marion  Reddon  knew  — 
she  probably  had  had  her  experiences.  But  at  least  she  had 
the  child. 

On  that  note  her  heart  became  centred,  and  she  hurried 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  233 

back  to  the  hotel  and  began  aimlessly  to  gather  her  clothes 
together  and  throw  them  into  the  trunks.  She  must  take 
her  child  and  leave  at  once.  She  did  not  want  to  see  him 
again.  .  .  .  But  where  should  she  go  —  how  ?  Jack  al- 
ways arranged  everything  for  her :  she  couldn't  even  make 
out  a  time-table  or  buy  a  railroad  ticket.  Marriage  had 
made  her  dependent  —  she  would  have  to  learn. 

At  this  moment  Bragdon  entered  the  room.  His  face  still 
wore  the  stern  expression  she  had  noted,  which  gave  him  the 
look  of  age. 

"What  are  you  doing?"  he  demanded  abruptly. 

"Don't  you  see  —  packing  !" 

"What  for?  ...  I've  cabled  home  for  more  money  — 
I'm  going  to  stay  here  and  paint." 

She  thought  swiftly  to  herself  that  the  Other  had  persuaded 
him  to  do  what  he  had  refused  to  do  for  her.  She  made  no 
reply,  but  continued  to  put  things  blindly  into  the  trunk. 


XI 

CRISIS 

WHEN  two  human  beings  —  above  all  when  man  and  wife 
—  meet  at  such  tense  moments,  one  of  Virgil's  beneficent 
clouds  should  descend  upon  them,  hiding  all,  and  they  should 
be  wafted  apart  to  remote  places,  there  to  abide  until  once 
more  a  sense  of  the  proportion  and  the  harmony  in  this 
mundane  system  has  taken  possession  of  them,  and  they 
have  become,  if  not  gods  and  goddesses,  at  least  reasonable 
human  beings.  The  least  the  historian  can  do  under  the 
circumstances  is  to  imitate  Virgil  and  draw  a  merciful  veil 
between  the  cruel  battle-field  and  all  profane  eyes.  The  more 
so  as  few  of  the  hot  words  then  uttered,  the  sharp  agony  dis- 
played, the  giving  and  the  baring  of  wounds  have  any  real 
effect  upon  the  result.  What  is  done  counts,  and  that  is 
about  all,  always. 

It  might  be  that  afterwards  Milly  derived  some  deeper 
understanding  of  herself,  of  her  husband,  and  of  the  married 
way  of  life  from  the  agony  she  then  experienced.  It  might 
be  that  the  young  artist,  headstrong  in  his  first  triumphant 
mastery,  the  first  achievement  of  his  whole  being,  entertained, 
for  some  moments  at  least,  the  idea  of  cutting  the  knot 
then  and  there  and  taking  his  freedom  which  he  had  surren- 
dered at  the  altar,  choosing  what  might  seem  to  him  then 
spiritual  life  instead  of  prolonged  death.  The  blood  was  in 
his  head,  the  scent  of  delirious  deeds  which  he  knew  now  that 

234 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  235 

he  could  do.  But  he  was  an  honest  and  loyal  young  Ameri- 
can, no  matter  what  he  had  done :  he  could  not  hesitate 
long.  One  glance  at  the  sleeping  form  of  his  small  child, 
dependent  upon  him  for  the  best  in  life,  probably  settled  the 
matter. 
In  the  calm  of  the  still  night  it  was  settled  —  and  by  him. 

The  little  colony  of  the  Hotel  du  Passage  were  genuinely 
concerned  over  the  hurried  departure  of  the  Bragdons,  who 
were  much  liked.  All  —  but  one  —  were  at  the  pier  that 
September  morning  to  wish  them  farewell  and  good  luck  and 
much  happiness.  It  was  understood  that  family  matters  had 
recalled  them  unexpectedly  to  the  States.  Too  bad  !  Brag- 
don  was  a  promising  chap,  the  great  painter  pronounced  at 
dejeuner,  —  willing  to  work,  intelligent,  with  his  own  ideas. 
Had  any  one  seen  Madame  Saratoff's  portrait?  He  had 
kept  very  quiet  about  that  —  perhaps  it  had  not  come  off. 
Well,  he  needed  years  of  hard  work,  which  he  wouldn't  get 
in  America,  worse  luck.  With  a  sigh  he  went  to  his  day's 
task  of  completing  the  thirty-seventh  edition  of  the  well- 
known  landscape,  —  "  Beside  the  Bay  at  Klerac,"  with 
a  fresh  variation  of  four  colored  sails  on  the  horizon  instead 
of  three.  .  .  . 

And  meanwhile  the  slow  train  to  Paris  was  carrying  a 
man,  who  having  climbed  his  hill  and  looked  upon  the 
promised  land  from  afar,  must  turn  his  back  for  the  present 
upon  all  its  glories  and  await  Opportunity. 


XII 


IT  is  a  long  and  tiresome  journey  in  a  second-class  compart- 
ment from  the  farther  end  of  Brittany  to  Paris,  even  under 
the  best  of  circumstances.  To  Jack  Bragdon  and  Milly, 
with  the  vivid  memory  of  their  personal  wreck  on  that  rocky 
coast,  it  was  monotonously  painful.  They  dared  not  ask 
each  other,  —  "What  next?"  At  first  Milly  thought  there 
could  be  no  next,  though  she  was  really  glad  not  to  be  making 
this  journey  alone  with  her  child,  as  she  had  expected  to  do. 
To  the  man  who  sat  in  the  opposite  corner  with  closed  eyes 
and  set  lips,  it  seemed  to  matter  little  for  the  present  what 
the  next  step  was  to  be. 

Happily  an  impersonal  fate  settled  this  for  them.  Brag- 
don found  at  the  bankers  in  Paris  an  answer  to  his  appeal  for 
funds.  The  curt  cable  read,  without  the  aid  of  code,  — 
"Come  Home."  Probably  that  would  have  been  the  wisest 
thing  to  do  in  any  case.  But  it  would  have  meant  a  hard 
struggle  with  himself  to  turn  his  back  so  quickly  upon  the 
promised  land  of  accomplishment.  Now  it  was  beyond  his 
power  to  do  otherwise,  unless  he  were  willing  to  force  Milly 
and  the  child  to  starve  on  what  he  could  make.  If  that  had 
ever  been  possible,  it  surely  was  not  any  longer. 

So  with  the  last  of  the  hoard  he  bought  their  tickets,  and 
all  three  sailed  for  New  York  on  the  next  steamer. 

236 


PART  FOUR 
REALITIES 


HOME  ONCE  MORE 

THERE  was  no  one  at  the  dock  to  greet  them. 

"Your  friends  come  down  to  see  you  off,"  Milly  reflected 
sadly,  while  Bragdon  was  struggling  with  the  inspectors, 
"but  they  let  you  find  your  way  back  by  yourself !" 

It  was  hot  and  very  noisy,  —  the  New  World,  —  and  no 
one  seemed  to  care  about  anything.  As  they  made  their 
way  up  town  through  the  crowded  streets,  Milly  felt  it 
must  be  impossible  for  human  beings  to  do  more  than  keep 
alive  in  this  maelstrom.  The  aspect  of  an  American  city 
with  its  savage  roar,  especially  of  New  York  in  the  full  cry 
of  the  day's  work,  was  simply  terrifying  after  two  years  of 
Europe.  There  was  something  so  sordidly  repellent  in  the 
flimsily  furnished  rooms  of  the  hotel  where  they  went  first, 
that  she  shed  a  few  tears  of  pure  homesickness.  She  longed 
to  take  the  first  train  west ;  for  the  sights  and  the  sounds  of 
Chicago,  if  no  gentler,  were  at  least  more  familiar. 

She  did  not  know  what  they  would  do ;  husband  and  wife 
had  not  discussed  plans  on  the  homeward  voyage  or  referred 
in  any  way  to  the  future,  both  shrinking  from  the  quaking 
bog  that  lay  between  them.  Now  their  course  must  speedily 
be  settled.  When  Bragdon  went  out  after  establishing  them 
in  their  hotel,  Milly  felt  curiously  like  a  passenger  on  a  ship 
whose  ticket  had  been  taken  for  her  and  all  arrangements 

239 


240  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

made  by  another.  All  she  could  do,  for  the  present  at  least, 
was  to  wait  and  see  what  would  happen.  .  .  . 

Towards  evening  Big  Brother  came  in  with  Jack  and  wel- 
comed her  back  nonchalantly.  He  had  the  New  York  air 
of  unconcern  over  departures  and  arrivals,  living  as  he  had 
all  his  life  in  a  place  where  coming  and  going  was  the  daily 
order  of  life.  He  declared  that  Milly  had  grown  prettier 
than  ever  and  accepted  his  niece  with  condescending  irony, 
—  "  Hello,  missy,  so  you  came  along,  too  ?  Made  in  France, 
eh  !"  and  chuckled  over  the  worn  joke. 

It  seemed  that  no  business  disaster  had  caused  him  to 
send  his  cable  recalling  them.  Business,  he  declared,  was 
"fine,  fine,  better  all  the  time,"  in  the  American  manner. 
It  was  merely  on  general  principles  that  he  had  cabled,  — 
"Come  home."  Two  years  was  enough  for  any  American 
to  spend  out  of  his  own  country,  even  for  an  artist.  Eying 
his  younger  brother  humorously,  he  remarked,  —  "I  thought 
you'd  better  get  a  taste  of  real  life,  and  earn  a  few  dollars. 
You  can  go  back  later  on  for  another  vacation.  ...  I 
saw  Clive  Reinhard  on  the  Avenue  the  other  day.  He  wanted 
to  know  how  you  were  getting  on.  Think  he  has  another  of 
his  books  on  the  way.  You'd  better  see  him,  Jack.  He's  a 
money-maker !" 

The  artist  meantime  sat  cross-legged  on  his  chair  and 
stroked  his  mustache  meditatively,  saying  nothing.  Milly 
glanced  at  him  timidly,  but  she  could  not  divine  what  he 
was  thinking  of  all  this.  As  he  was  American-trained  he 
was  probably  realizing  the  force  of  Big  Brother's  whole- 
some doctrine.  He  could  not  live  on  other  people's  bounty 
and  prosecute  the  artist's  vague  chimeras.  Having  taken 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  241 

to  himself  a  wife  and  added  thereto  a  child,  he  must  earn  their 
living  and  his  own,  like  other  men,  by  offering  the  world 
something  it  cared  to  pay  for. 

Nevertheless,  there  smouldered  in  his  eyes  the  hint 
of  another  thought,  —  a  suggestion  of  the  artist's  fierce 
egotism,  the  desire  to  fulfil  his  purpose  no  matter  at  whose 
cost,  —  the  willingness  to  commit  crime  rather  than  surrender 
his  life  purpose.  It  was  the  complement  of  the  Russian's 
"will  to  eat,"  only  deeper,  more  impersonal,  and  more  tragic. 
But  nowadays  men  like  Jack  Bragdon  neither  steal  nor 
murder  —  nor  commit  lesser  crimes  —  for  the  sake  of  Art. 

Instead  he  inquired  casually,  —  "  Where  is  Reinhard  stay- 
ing? The  same  place?"  and  when  his  brother  replied, — 
"He's  got  an  apartment  somewhere  up  town.  They'll 
know  at  the  club  —  he's  been  very  successful,"  —  Bragdon 
merely  nodded.  And  the  next  morning  after  breakfast  he 
sallied  from  the  hotel,  leaving  Milly  to  dispose  of  her- 
self and  the  child  as  she  would.  For  several  days  she 
hardly  saw  him.  He  had  caught  the  key  of  the  New 
World  symphony  at  once,  and  had  set  forth  on  the  war- 
path without  losing  time  to  get  the  Job.  He  succeeded 
without  much  difficulty  in  securing  the  illustration  of  Rein- 
hard's  new  piece  of  popular  sentimentality  and  also  put  him- 
self in  touch  with  the  editors  of  a  new  magazine.  Then  to 
work,  not  his  own  work,  but  the  world's  work,  —  what  it 
apparently  wanted,  at  least  would  pay  well  for.  And  the 
first  step  was  to  find  some  sort  of  abiding-place  where  his 
family  could  live  less  expensively  than  at  the  hotel.  Here 
Milly  came  in. 

The  one  distinct  memory  Milly  kept  of  that  first  year  in 


242  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

New  York  was  of  hunting  apartments  and  moving.  It 
seemed  to  her  that  she  must  have  looked  at  a  cityful  of 
dark,  noisy  rooms  ambitiously  called  apartments,  each  more 
impossible  than  the  others.  (As  long  as  they  lived  in  New 
York  she  never  gave  up  the  desire  for  light  and  quiet,  —  the 
two  most  expensive  luxuries  hi  that  luxurious  metropolis.) 
They  settled  temporarily  in  a  small  furnished  ''studio- 
apartment"  near  Washington  Square,  where  they  were  con- 
stantly in  each  other's  way.  Milly  called  it  a  tenement. 
Although  they  had  done  very  well  in  two  rooms  in  Brittany, 
it  required  much  more  space  than  the  studio-apartment 
offered  to  house  two  people  with  divided  hearts.  So  in  the 
spring  they  moved  farther  up-town  to  a  larger  and  more  ex- 
pensive apartment  without  a  studio.  Bragdon  preferred, 
anyway,  to  do  his  work  outside  and  shared  a  studio  with  a 
friend.  Milly  regarded  this  new  abode  as  merely  tempo- 
rary —  they  had  taken  it  for  only  one  year  —  and  they  talked 
intermittently  of  moving. 

Once  or  twice  Jack  suggested  going  to  one  of  the  innumer- 
able suburbs  or  abandoning  the  city  altogether  for  some 
small  country  place,  as  other  artists  had  done.  It  would 
be  cheaper,  and  they  could  have  a  house,  their  own  patch  of 
earth,  and  some  quiet.  Milly  received  this  suggestion  in 
silence.  Indeed  they  both  shrank  from  facing  each  other  in 
suburban  solitude.  They  were  both  by  nature  and  training 
cockneys.  Milly  especially  had  rather  perch  among  the 
chimney-pots  and  see  the  procession  go  by  from  the  roof 
than  possess  all  that  Nature  had  to  offer.  And  they  were 
still  young,  she  felt:  much  might  happen  in  the  city,  "if 
they  didn't  give  up."  But  she  said  equivocally,  — 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  243 

"Your  work  keeps  you  so  much  in  the  city;  you  have  to 
see  people." 

What  he  wanted  to  reply  was  that  he  should  abandon  all 
this  job-hunting  and  live  lean  until  he  could  sell  his  real  work, 
instead  of  striving  to  maintain  the  semblance  of  an  expensive 
comfort  in  the  city  by  selling  himself  to  magazines  and  pub- 
lishers. But  Milly  would  not  understand  the  urgency  of 
that — how  could  she  ?  And  what  had  he  to  offer  her  now  for 
the  sacrifice  he  should  be  demanding  ?  What  would  she  do 
with  the  long,  silent  days  in  the  country,  while  he  worked  and 
destroyed  what  he  did,  only  to  begin  again  on  the  morrow  at 
the  ceaseless  task,  with  its  doubtful  result  ?  If  there  had  been 
real  companionship,  or  if  the  flame  of  their  passion  had  still 
burned,  then  it  might  not  have  proved  an  intolerable  exile 
for  the  woman.  .  .  . 

They  did  as  others  would  do  under  the  circumstances  — 
hung  on  in  the  great  city  as  best  they  could,  in  the  hope  of  a 
better  fortune  soon,  living  expectantly  from  day  to  day. 
Each  month  the  city  life  seemed  to  demand  more  money,  and 
each  month  Bragdon  sank  deeper  into  the  mire  of  journalistic 
art.  Worst  of  all  they  got  into  the  habit  of  regarding  their 
life  as  a  temporary  makeshift,  which  they  expected  to  change 
when  they  could,  tolerating  it  for  the  present  as  best  they 
could,  —  like  most  of  the  workers  of  the  world.  Bragdon,  at 
least,  knew  what  he  hoped  for,  impossible  as  it  might  be,  — 
a  total  escape  from  the  debauching  work  he  was  doing. 
Milly  hoped  vaguely  for  a  pleasanter  apartment  and  an  easier 
way  of  living,  —  more  friends  and  more  good  times  with 
them. 

One  of  the  first  familiar  faces  Milly  met  in  the  be- 


244  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

wildering  new  city  was  Marion  Reddon's.  She  came 
across  the  little  New  Englander  standing  at  the  curb 
of  a  crowded  street,  a  child  by  either  hand,  waiting  until 
the  flow  of  traffic  should  halt  long  enough  to  permit  crossing. 

"Marion!"  Milly  cried,  her  eyes  dancing  with  delight 
on  recognizing  her.  A  smile  came  to  the  white,  tired  face 
of  the  other  woman,  —  the  smile  that  gave  something  of 
beauty  to  the  plain  face.  "Are  you  living  here,  too  —  in 
New  York?" 

"Yes,  since  the  autumn." 

"Has  Sam  given  up  his  teaching?" 

"I  made  him  resign." 

They  drew  to  one  side  where  they  could  hear  each  other's 
voices.  The  sight  of  Marion  Reddon  brought  back  happy 
days,  —  at  least  they  seemed  to  be  happy  now,  by  com- 
parison. Marion  continued :  — 

"The  teaching  was  too  easy  for  him  —  besides  he  didn't 
like  it.  And  if  a  man  doesn't  like  that  work,  he's  no  busi- 
ness doing  it.  He  had  much  better  get  out  into  the  fight 
with  other  men  and  make  his  way  against  them." 

"But  you  loved  the  college  town:  you  must  have  hated 
to  leave  it." 

"It  was  what  I  had  known  all  my  life,  and  it  was  a  good 
sort  of  place  to  bring  the  children  up  in  —  pleasant  and 
easy.  But  New  York  is  the  big  game  for  men,  of  course. 
I  wanted  Sam  to  go  up  against  it." 

She  smiled,  but  Milly  might  divine  something  of  the 
courage  it  had  taken  for  Marion  to  launch  her  small  craft 
in  the  seething  city.  They  talked  a  little  longer,  then 
parted,  having  exchanged  addresses. 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  245 

"Take  the  subway,"  Marion  called  out  as  she  plunged 
into  the  street,  "get  out  when  it  stops,  then  walk !  Don't 
forget ! "  and  with  a  last  smile  she  was  gone. 

Milly  went  on  her  way  about  some  errand,  thinking  that 
Marion  was  no  longer  in  the  least  pretty,  —  quite  homely, 
in  fact,  she  was  so  worn  and  white.  She  had  nice,  regular 
features  and  a  quaintly  becoming  way  of  wearing  her  hair 
in  simple  Greek  fashion,  waving  over  her  brows.  If  she 
only  dressed  better  and  took  more  care  of  herself,  she  might 
be  attractive  still.  She  had  let  herself  fade.  Milly  won- 
dered if  Sam  loved  her  still,  really  loved  her,  as  he  seemed 
to  in  his  rough  way  when  they  were  together  that  summer 
at  Gossensass.  How  could  he?  That  was  the  cruelty  in 
marriage  for  women.  Men  took  the  best  they  had  to  offer 
of  their  youth  and  beauty,  gave  them  the  burdens  of  chil- 
dren, and  then  wanted  something  else  when  they  had  be- 
come homely  and  unattractive.  At  least  Jack  did  not  yet 
have  that  excuse  with  her. 

Milly  did  not  think  that  a  man  might  love  even  a  faded 
flower  like  Marion  Reddon,  if  she  had  kept  the  sweet  savor 
of  her  spirit  alive.  ...  So  the  Reddons  were  in  New 
York,  living  far  out  in  the  impossible  hinterland  of  the 
Bronx.  When  she  told  her  husband  at  dinner  of  meeting 
Marion  Reddon  and  of  their  new  move,  Jack  seemed  neither 
greatly  surprised  nor  interested. 

"We  must  try  to  see  them,"  he  remarked  vaguely. 

Perhaps,  she  thought,  he  did  not  care  to  recall  those 
happier  days  in  Europe.  The  truth  was  that  the  New 
York  struggle  specialized  men  intensely,  removing  to  the 
vague  background  every  one  not  directly  in  the  path.  Brag- 


246  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

don's  efforts  were  so  supremely  concentrated  on  rolling  his 
own  small  cart  in  the  push,  that  he  had  little  spirit  to  be- 
stow elsewhere,  however  well  he  might  wish  people  like  the 
Reddons  and  others  not  in  his  immediate  game. 

"I  thought  you  liked  the  Reddons,"  Milly  said,  half 
accusingly. 

"I  do  —  what  makes  you  think  I  don't?"  he  asked, 
taking  up  a  pipe  preparatory  to  work. 

"You  don't  seem  much  interested  in  their  being  in  New 
York." 

"Oh,"  he  said  lightly,  "every  one  comes  to  New  York." 

And  he  turned  to  his  evening  task.  This  habit  of  work- 
ing evenings,  which  Milly  rather  resented,  served  to  pre- 
vent discussion  —  of  all  kinds.  She  played  a  few  bars  on 
the  piano,  then  settled  herself  comfortably  with  Clive 
Reinhard's  latest  book.  That  was  the  way  their  evenings 
usually  went  unless  some  one  came  in,  which  did  not  happen 
often,  or  Jack  was  called  out. 

Even  New  York  could  be  dull,  Milly  found. 


II 

"BUNKER'S" 

MILLY  could  not  remember  just  when  she  first  heard  of 
Bunker's  Magazine,  —  certainly  not  before  their  return 
from  Europe,  but  soon  thereafter,  for  its  name  was  asso- 
ciated with  her  first  experiences  in  New  York.  Shortly 
after  they  landed,  Bunker's  was  added  to  the  highly  colored 
piles  on  the  news-stands  among  the  other  periodicals  that 
increased  almost  daily  in  number.  During  that  first  year 
of  apartment  hunting  and  moving,  the  name  of  Bunker's 
became  a  household  word  with  them.  Some  of  the  men 
Bragdon  knew  were  interested  in  the  new  magazine,  and  one 
of  the  first  jobs  he  did  was  a  cover  design  for  an  early  num- 
ber. The  magazine  with  his  picture  —  a  Brittany  girl 
knee-deep  in  the  dark  water  helping  to  unload  a  fishing 
boat  —  lay  on  the  centre  table  for  weeks.  Clive  Reinhard's 
new  novel,  for  which  Jack  did  the  pictures,  also  came  out 
in  Bunker's  this  year.  The  novelist  had  been  paid  ten 
thousand  dollars  for  the  serial  rights,  Jack  told  Milly, 
which  seemed  to  her  a  large  price.  Some  forms  of  art, 
she  concluded,  were  well  paid. 

Bunker's  was  to  be  a  magazine  of  a  very  special  kind, 
of  course,  altogether  different  from  any  other  magazine,  — 
literary  and  popular  and  artistic  all  at  once.  Also  it  was 
to  have  an  "uplift" — they  were  just  beginning  to  use 
that  canting  term  and  Bunker's  did  much  to  popularize  it. 

247 


248  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

The  magazine  was  to  be  intensely  American  in  spirit,  opti- 
mistic and  enthusiastic  in  tone,  and  very  chummy  with 
its  readers.  Each  month  it  discussed  confidentially  with 
"our  readers"  the  glorious  success  of  the  previous  issue  and 
the  astonishing  triumphs  in  the  way  of  amusement  and  in- 
struction that  were  to  be  expected  in  the  future.  .  .  .  All 
this  Milly  gathered  from  the  editor's  " talks"  and  also  from 
the  men  who  worked  for  it  or  hoped  to  work  for  it,  who  were 
among  their  first  friends  in  New  York.  Its  owner,  who  had 
boldly  given  to  it  his  name,  was  a  rich  young  man,  something 
of  an  amateur  in  life,  but  intensely  ambitious  of  "  making 
himself  felt."  And  this  was  his  way  of  doing  it,  instead  of 
buying  a  newspaper,  which  would  have  been  more  expen- 
sive, or  of  running  for  public  office,  which  would  have  meant 
nothing  at  all  to  anybody.  Jack  pointed  him  out  to  his 
wife  one  night  at  the  theatre.  He  was  in  a  box  with  a  party 
of  men  and  women,  —  all  very  well  dressed  and  quite  smart- 
looking.  He  had  a  regular,  smooth-shaven  face  with  a 
square  jaw  like  hundreds  of  other  men  in  New  York  at 
that  moment.  Milly  thought  Mrs.  Bunker  overdressed 
and  "ordinary."  She  was  a  very  blonde,  high-colored 
woman,  of  the  kind  a  rich  man  might  marry  for  her  physi- 
cal charm. 

All  that  first  year  Bunker's  came  more  and  more  to  the 
fore  in  their  life.  The  wife  of  the  Responsible  Editor,  Mrs. 
Montgomery  Billman,  called  on  Milly  in  company  with 
Mrs.  Fredericks,  the  wife  of  the  Fiction  Editor,  and  the 
two  ladies,  while  critically  examining  Milly,  talked  of  "our 
magazine"  and  described  the  Howard  Bunkers,  who  evi- 
dently played  a  large  role  in  their  lives.  Mrs.  Billman, 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  249 

Milly  decided,  and  so  confided  to  her  husband,  was  hard 
and  ambitious  socially.  Mrs.  Fredericks  she  "could  not 
quite  make  out,"  and  liked  her  better.  Both  the  ladies 
seemed  to  "go  in  for  things"  hard  and  meant  to  "count." 
They  knew  much  more  about  their  husbands'  affairs  than 
Milly  had  ever  cared  to  know  about  Jack's.  She  decided 
that  was  the  modern  way,  and  that  Jack  ought  to  take 
her  more  fully  into  his  confidence.  By  the  time  she  had 
returned  these  visits  and  realized  the  importance  felt  by 
the  editors'  wives  for  their  husbands'  work  Bunker's  gained 
greatly  in  her  eyes. 

Then,  unexpectedly,  the  magazine  became  of  first  impor- 
tance to  the  Bragdons.  Jack  was  asked  to  become  the  Art 
Editor.  He  had  been  at  luncheon  with  Bunker  himself  and 
the  Responsible  Editor,  who  was  a  gaunt  and  rather  slouchy 
person  from  the  other  shore  of  the  Mississippi.  The  Re- 
sponsible Editor,  who  had  a  way  of  looking  through  his 
spectacles  as  if  he  were  carrying  heavy  public  burdens, 
unfolded  to  Bragdon  the  aims  and  purposes  of  the  maga- 
zine, while  Bunker  contented  himself  with  ordering  the 
lunch  and,  at  the  close,  making  him  the  offer.  Milly,  when 
she  learned  of  the  offer,  was  surprised  that  her  husband 
did  not  show  more  elation.  She  had  a  woman's  respect  for 
any  institution,  and  Mrs.  Billman  had  made  her  feel  that 
Bunker's  was  a  very  important  institution. 

"What  will  they  give?"   she  asked. 

"Six  thousand." 

It  was  more  than  she  had  ever  dreamed  an  "artist" 
could  make  as  an  assured  income. 

"Aren't  you  glad  —  all  that!"    she  exclaimed. 


250  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"That's  not  much.  Billman  gets  twelve  thousand  and 
Fredericks  eight.  But  I  shall  be  able  to  make  something 
'on  the  side.'" 

"I  think  it's  wonderful !"  Milly  said. 

But  Jack  exhibited  slight  enthusiasm. 

"I'll  have  to  see  to  getting  illustrations  for  their  idiotic 
stories  and  half  tones  and  colors  —  all  that  rubbish,  you 
know." 

There  was  nothing  inspiring  to  him  in  "  educating  the 
people  in  the  best  art,"  as  the  Responsible  Editor  had 
talked  about  the  job. 

"And  they  want  me  to  contribute  a  series  of  articles  on 
the  new  art  centres  in  the  United  States :  Denver  in  Art, 
Pittsburgh  in  Art,  Milwaukee  in  Art  —  that  sort  of  rot," 
he  scoffed. 

Milly  saw  nothing  contemptible  in  this;  all  the  maga- 
zines did  the  same  thing  in  one  subject  or  another  to  arouse 
local  enthusiasm  for  themselves. 

"You  write  so  easily,"  she  suggested,  by  way  of  encourage- 
ment, remembering  the  newspaper  paragraphs  he  used  to 
contribute  to  the  Star. 

"But  I  want  to  paint !"  Bragdon  growled,  and  dropped 
the  subject. 

In  the  intervals  of  pot  boiling  he  had  been  working  on 
several  canvases  that  he  hoped  to  exhibit  in  the  spring. 
Milly  had  lost  confidence  in  painting  since  she  had  come  to 
New  York  and  had  heard  about  the  lives  of  young  painters. 
Even  if  Jack  could  finish  his  pictures  in  time  for  the  ex- 
hibition, they  might  not  be  accepted,  and  if  they  were,  would 
probably  be  hung  in  some  obscure  corner  of  the  crowded 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  251 

galleries  for  several  weeks,  with  a  lot  of  other  " good-enough" 
canvases,  only  to  be  returned  to  the  artist  —  a  dead  loss, 
the  fate  of  most  pictures,  she  had  learned. 

So  Milly  was  for  the  Art  Editorship.  She  took  counsel 
with  Big  Brother,  who  happened  to  call,  and  B.  B.,  who 
regarded  Milly  as  a  sensible  woman,  the  right  sort  for  an 
impracticable  artist  to  have  married,  said:  "Jack  would  be 
crazy  to  let  such  a  chance  slip  by  him.  I  know  Bunker  — 
he's  all  right."  So  when  he  saw  Jack  next,  he  went  at  him 
boisterously  on  the  subject,  but  the  artist  cut  him  short  by 
remarking  quietly,  —  "  I've  told  them  I'd  take  it  —  the 
thing's  settled." 

When  Milly  heard  this,  she  felt  a  little  reaction.  Would 
Marion  Reddon  have  done  the  same  with  Sam?  But  she 
put  her  doubts  aside  easily.  "  It'll  be  a  good  start.  Jack  is 
still  young,  and  he  will  have  plenty  of  time  to  paint — if  he  has 
it  in  him"  (a  reservation  she  would  not  have  made  two  years 
before),  "and  it  will  do  him  good  to  know  more  people." 

Milly  would  like  herself  to  know  more  people  in  this 
great  city,  which  was  just  beginning  to  interest  her,  and 
she  was  not  at  all  inclined  to  immure  herself  in  a  suburb 
or  the  depths  of  the  country  with  a  husband  who,  after 
all,  had  not  fully  satisfied  her  heart.  To  know  people,  to 
have  a  wide  circle  of  acquaintance,  seemed  to  her,  as  it  did 
to  most  people,  of  the  highest  importance,  not  merely  for 
pleasure  but  for  business  as  well.  How  otherwise  was  one 
to  get  on  in  this  life,  except  through  knowing  people  ?  Even 
an  artist  must  make  himself  seen.  ...  So  she  con- 
sidered that  in  urging  her  husband  to  become  part  of  the 
Bunker  machine,  she  was  acting  wisely  for  both,  —  nay, 


252  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

for  all  three  of  the  family,  for  should  not  Virginia's  future 
already  be  taken  into  account? 

The  wife  of  the  Fiction  Editor,  with  whom  she  had  be- 
come intimate  in  her  rapid  way,  confirmed  this  view  of 
things.  Hazel  Fredericks  fascinated  Milly  much  more 
than  the  aggressive  Mrs.  Billman,  perhaps  because  she 
went  out  of  her  way  to  be  nice  to  the  artist's  wife.  Milly 
had  not  yet  convinced  the  wife  of  the  Responsible  Editor 
that  she  was  important,  and  she  never  wasted  time  over 
"negative"  people.  The  dark  little  Hazel  Fredericks,  with 
her  muddy  eyes  and  rather  thick  lips,  was  a  more  subtle 
woman  than  Mrs.  Billman  and  took  the  pains  to  cultivate 
"possibilities."  She  had  Milly  at  lunch  one  day  and  listened 
attentively  to  all  her  dubitations  about  her  husband's  career. 
Then  she  pronounced :  — 

"Stanny  was  like  that.  He  wanted  to  write  stories. 
They  are  pretty  good  stories,  too,  but  you  know  there's 
not  much  sale  for  the  merely  good  thing.  And  unsuccessful 
art  of  any  kind  is  hardly  worth  while,  is  it  ?  .  .  .  When  we 
were  first  married,  he  had  an  idea  of  going  away  somewhere 
and  living  on  nothing  at  all  until  he  had  made  a  name. 
But  that  is  not  the  way  things  are  done,  is  it?" 

She  paused  to  laugh  sympathetically  and  look  at  Milly, 
as  if  she  must  understand  what  foolish  creatures  men  often 
were  and  how  wives  like  Milly  and  herself  had  to  save 
them  from  their  follies. 

"Of  course,"  she  continued,  "if  he  had  had  Reinhard's 
luck,  it  would  have  been  another  thing.  Clive  Reinhard's 
stuff  is  just  rot,  of  course,  but  people  like  it  and  he  gets  all 
kinds  of  prices." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  253 

She  took  a  cigarette  and  throwing  herself  comfortably  on 
a  divan  blew  a  silvery  wreath  upwards.  Meditatively  she 
summed  up  the  philosophy  she  held,  — 

"It's  better  to  stay  with  the  game  and  make  the  most 
you  can  out  of  it,  don't  you  think  so  ? " 

Milly  agreed. 

"And  Bunker's  is  a  very  good  game,  if  you  haven't  any 
money." 

Milly  admired  her  new  friend's  cleverness.  She  was  the 
kind  who  knew  how  to  manage  life,  —  her  own  life  especially, 
—  and  get  what  she  wanted  out  of  the  game.  Milly  began 
to  have  great  respect  for  that  sort  of  women  and  wished 
she  were  more  like  them.  She  felt  that  Hazel  Fredericks 
never  did  things  waywardly :  she  always  had  a  well-calcu- 
lated purpose  hidden  in  her  mind,  just  as  she  had  a  care- 
fully conceived  picture  of  herself  that  she  desired  to  leave 
upon  the  minds  of  others.  If  Mrs.  Billman  had  put  her 
husband  where  he  was  in  Bunker's  by  force,  as  her  rival 
hinted,  Mrs.  Fredericks  had  also  engineered  "Stanny's" 
career  with  skilful  strategy. 

Just  at  present  she  was  involved  in  a  project  for  a 
cooperative  apartment  building,  which  some  people  she 
knew  were  to  put  up  in  a  desirable  neighborhood.  She 
quite  fired  Milly  with  the  desire  to  buy  space  in  the 
building. 

"It's  really  the  only  way  you  can  live  in  New  York,  if 
you  haven't  money,"  Mrs.  Fredericks  said  convincingly, 
displaying  the  plan  of  their  tiny  apartment.  "Of  course 
we  can't  have  children  —  there's  no  room  for  them  — 


254  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

but  Stanny  is  so  delicate  I  shouldn't  feel  it  was  right  to 
have  them,  anyway." 

She  spoke  as  if  it  were  a  sacrifice  she  had  deliberately 
made  for  her  husband.  .  .  . 

Milly  talked  enthusiastically  to  Jack  that  night  of  the 
new  cooperative  building  and  urged  him  to  look  into  it. 
"I  do  so  want  a  home  of  my  own,"  she  said  with  a  touch 
of  pathos.  "Mrs.  Fredericks  still  thinks  there's  space  to 
be  had  on  one  of  the  floors." 

Bragdon  looked  into  it,  and  reported  that  a  good  deal  of 
space  was  to  be  had.  He  was  dubious  of  the  wisdom  of  the 
scheme,  even  if  by  a  complicated  arrangement  of  loans  they 
could  manage  to  buy  a  nominal  share.  But  Milly  was  per- 
sistent and  proved  to  him  with  a  sudden  command  of  figures 
that  it  would  really  reduce  the  cost  of  rent.  She  found  out 
more  details,  and  she  gained  the  support  of  Big  Brother, 
who  generously  offered  to  finance  the  undertaking  for 
them.  "It  will  make  you  feel  settled,"  he  said,  "to  own 
your  own  home."  Jack  could  not  see  that  in  the  end  he 
should  own  much  of  anything  unless  by  some  surprising 
stroke  of  luck  a  good  many  thousands  of  dollars  fell  into 
his  lap.  But  he  felt  that  Milly  should  have  a  permanent 
place  of  her  own,  such  as  the  slice  of  the  new  ten-story 
building  offered,  and  it  would  be  better  for  the  child  than 
to  be  wandering  from  rented  apartment  to  apartment.  So 
the  plans  were  drawn,  the  agreements  practically  made, 
when  he  had  a  final  misgiving. 

The  agreements  lay  on  the  table  before  him  to  be  signed, 
and  he  had  just  read  them  over  carefully.  They  seemed  to 
him  like  a  chain  that,  once  signed,  bound  him  to  the  city, 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  255 

to  Bunker's  for  an  indefinite  future.  His  editorial  chair 
had  been  specially  galling  that  day,  perhaps,  or  the  impulse 
to  paint  stronger  than  usual.  He  threw  down  the  papers 
and  exclaimed,  — 

"Let's  quit,  Milly,  before  it's  too  late!" 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

And  he  made  his  plea,  for  the  last  time  seriously,  to  take 
their  lives  hi  their  hands  and  like  brave  people  walk  out 
of  the  city-maze  to  freedom,  to  a  simple,  rational  life  with- 
out pretence. 

"I  want  to  cut  out  all  this!"  he  cried  with  passion, 
waving  his  hand  carelessly  over  the  huddle  of  city  roofs, 
"get  into  some  quiet  spot  and  paint,  paint,  paint !  until  I 
make  'em  see  that  I  have  something  to  say.  It's  the  only 
way  to  do  things !" 

With  passionate  vividness  he  saw  the  years  of  his  youth 
and  desire  slipping  away  hi  the  round  of  trivial  "jobs"  in 
the-  city ;  he  saw  the  slow  decay  of  resolves  under  the  ever 
increasing  demands  to  "make  good"  by  earning  money. 
And  he  shrank  from  it  as  from  the  pit. 

"I  don't  see  why  you  say  that,"  Milly  replied.  "Most 

painters  live  in  the  city  part  of  the  year.  There's 

and " 

She  argued  the  matter  with  him  long  into  the  night, 
obstinately  refusing  to  see  the  fatality  of  the  choice  they 
were  making. 

"We  can  get  rid  of  the  apartment  any  time,  if  we  don't 
want  it,"  she  said,  and  quoted  Hazel  Fredericks. 

They  came  nearer  to  seeing  into  each  other's  souls  that 
night  than  ever  before  or  ever  again.  They  saw  that  their 


256  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

inmost  interests  were  antagonistic  and  must  always  remain 
so  for  all  the  active,  creative  years  of  their  lives,  and  the 
best  they  could  do,  for  the  sake  of  their  dead  ideals,  much 
more  for  the  sake  of  the  living  child,  was  decently  to  com- 
promise between  their  respective  egotisms  and  thus  "live 
and  let  live." 

"If  I  had  married  a  plain  business  man,"  Milly  let  fall 
in  the  heat  of  the  argument,  revealing  in  that  phrase  the 
knowledge  she  had  arrived  at  of  her  mistake,  "it  would 
have  been  different." 

Bragdon  was  not  sure  of  that,  but  he  was  sure  that  in 
so  far  as  he  could  he  must  supply  for  her  the  things  that 
"plain  business  man"  could  have  given  her0  Or  they  must 
part  —  they  even  looked  into  that  gulf,  from  which  both 
shrank  back.  At  the  end  Milly  said :  — 

"If  you  don't  think  it's  best,  don't  do  it.  You  must  do 
what  you  think  is  best  for  your  career." 

Such  was  her  present  ideal  of  wifely  submission  to  hus- 
band in  all  matters  that  concerned  his  "career,"  but  she 
let  him  plainly  perceive  that  in  saying  this  she  was  merely 
putting  the  responsibility  of  their  lives  wholly  upon  his 
shoulders,  as  he  was  the  breadwinner. 

With  an  impatient  gesture,  Bragdon  drew  the  agreements 
towards  him  and  signed  them. 

"There  !"  he  said,  with  a  somewhat  bitter  laugh,  "noth- 
ing in  life  is  worth  so  much  talk." 

Afterwards  Milly  reminded  him  that  he  had  made  this 
choice  himself  of  his  own  free  will :  he  could  not  reproach 
her  for  their  having  bought  a  slice  in  the  East  River  Terrace 
Building. 


Ill 


ONE  of  the  notable  incidents  of  this  period  was  the  visit 
they  made  to  the  Bunker's  place  on  Long  Island.  It  was 
in  the  autumn  after  Bragdon  had  been  on  the  magazine 
staff  for  some  months.  Milly  went  out  in  the  train  with 
Hazel  Fredericks,  who  took  this  occasion  to  air  her  views 
of  the  Bunkers  and  the  Billmans  more  fully  than  she  had 
before.  She  described  the  magazine  proprietor  and  his 
wife  in  a  succinct  sentence,  — 

"  They  're  second-class  New  York:  everything  the  others 
have  but  the  right  crowd  —  you'll  see." 

Howard  Bunker,  she  admitted,  was  likable,  —  a  jolly, 
unpretentious,  shrewd  business  man,  with  a  hearty  Ameri- 
can appetite  for  the  bustle  of  existence.  As  for  the  hand- 
some Mrs.  Bunker,  —  "She  was  from  Waterbury,  Con- 
necticut, you  know,"  she  said,  assuming  that  Milly,  who 
had  heard  of  the  Connecticut  town  solely  as  a  place  where 
a  popular  cheap  watch  was  manufactured,  would  understand 
the  depth  of  social  inferiority  Mrs.  Howard  Bunker's  origin 
implied.  "She's  too  lazy  to  be  really  ambitious.  They 
have  a  box  at  the  Opera,  but  that  means  nothing  these 
days.  She's  kind,  if  you  don't  put  her  to  any  trouble,  and 
they  have  awfully  good  food.  .  .  .  It's  a  bore  coming  out 
to  their  place,  but  you  have  to,  once  in  so  often,  you  under- 
s  257 


258  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

stand.  You  sit  around  and  eat  and  look  over  the  stables 
and  the  garden  and  all  that  sort  of  thing." 

She  further  explained  that  probably  Grace  Billman  was 
motoring  out  with  their  host.  "She  always  manages 
that :  she  regards  him  as  her  property,  you  know."  It 
would  be  a  "shop  party,"  she  expected.  "That's  all  the 
social  imagination  these  people  have :  they  get  us  together 
by  groups  —  we're  the  magazine  group.  Possibly  she'll  have 
Clive  Reinhard.  He's  different,  though,  because  he's  made  a 
name  for  himself,  so  that  all  sorts  of  people  run  after  him." 

Mrs.  Bunker  met  the  young  women  at  the  station,  driv- 
ing her  own  ponies.  Milly  recognized  the  type  at  a  glance, 
as  much  from  her  Chicago  experience  as  from  Mrs.  Fred- 
ericks' description.  Mrs.  Bunker  was  a  largish,  violent 
blonde,  with  a  plethora  of  everything  about  her,  —  hair  and 
blood  and  flesh.  She  was  cordial  in  her  greeting  to  the 
editors'  wives.  She  apparently  regarded  the  magazine  as 
one  of  her  husband's  fads,  —  an  incident  of  his  wealth,  — 
like  a  shooting-box  or  a  racing  stable  or  a  philanthropy. 
It  gave  prestige. 

"I've  got  Clive  Reinhard,"  she  announced,  as  they  started 
from  the  station,  a  note  of  triumph  in  her  languid  voice. 
"My,  but  he's  popular.  I've  tried  to  get  him  for  a  month. 
This  time  I  had  him  on 'the  telephone,  and  I  said  'I  won't 
let  you  go  —  simply  won't  ring  off  until  you  promise.  I'll 
tell  Howard  to  turn  down  your  next  book.'" 

She  laughed  at  her  own  wit.  Hazel  Fredericks  glanced 
at  Milly  with  a  look  of  intelligence.  Milly  was  much 
amused  by  the  good  lady  and  listened  appreciatively  to  her 
petty  conversation.  .  .  . 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  259 

It  was  all  just  as  Mrs.  Fredericks  had  predicted.  Their 
host  arrived  shortly  in  his  car  with  Mrs.  Montgomery  Bill- 
man,  who  cast  a  scornful  glance  at  the  "shop  party/'  nodded 
condescendingly  at  Milly,  kissed  Hazel  on  the  tip  of  her 
nose,  and  retired  to  her  room.  The  men  came  along  later, 
in  time  for  dinner,  all  except  the  popular  novelist,  who  was 
motored  over  from  another  house  party  the  next  morning. 
Dinner  was  long  and  dull.  The  Responsible  Editress  ab- 
sorbed the  host  for  the  most  part.  What  little  general 
talk  there  was  turned  on  the  magazine,  especially  on  the 
noise  it  was  making  with  a  series  of  "exposure"  articles  on 
the  "Crimes  of  Big  Business."  Milly  could  not  understand 
how  Mr.  Bunker,  who  seemed  to  have  prospered  under  the 
rule  of  Big  Business,  could  permit  such  articles  in  his  maga- 
zine. But  Reinhard  explained  to  her  the  next  day  that 
Radicalism  was  the  "new  note."  "You  have  to  be  pro- 
gressive and  reform  and  all  that  to  break  into  notice,"  he 
said. 

After  dinner  there  was  a  little  music,  some  bridge,  more 
talk ;  then  the  women  yawningly  went  to  bed,  while  the  men 
stayed  up  for  another  cigar  and  further  shop  talk.  The 
next  day  was  also  much  as  Hazel  Fredericks  had  said  it 
would  be.  It  was  hot,  and  after  the  very  late  and  copious 
breakfast  everybody  was  languid.  Milly  was  much  in- 
terested in  being  shown  over  the  place  by  her  hostess.  She 
admired  the  gardens,  the  hothouses,  the  planting,  the 
stables,  and  all  the  other  appurtenances  of  a  modern  coun- 
try estate.  Later  she  had  a  brief  tete-a-tete  with  Bunker, 
who  had  been  prejudiced  against  her  by  Mrs.  Billman  and 
was  bored  by  her  too  evident  flattery.  She  had  also  a  talk 


260  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

with  Clive  Reinhard,  with  whom  she  discussed  his  last 
story  and  his  " ideas  about  women."  For  the  rest  it  was  a 
torpid  and  sensual  Sunday  with  much  to  eat  and  drink,  — 
very  much  like  the  Sunday  of  some  thousands  of  rich  Ameri- 
cans all  over  the  land.  Most  of  the  guests  returned  to  the 
city  on  an  evening  train,  bored  and  unconsciously  glad  to 
get  back  into  their  respective  ruts. 

All  but  Milly !  She  had  enjoyed  herself  quite  genuinely, 
and  with  her  quick  social  perceptions  had  gathered  a  great 
deal  from  the  visit,  much  of  which  she  imparted  to  her 
drowsing  husband  on  the  train.  She  mapped  out  for  his 
duller  masculine  apprehension  the  social  hierarchy  of  Bun- 
ker's.  Mrs.  Bunker  patronized  Mrs.  Billman,  invited  her 
to  her  best  dinners  and  to  her  opera  box,  because  she  was 
striking  in  looks  and  had  made  a  place  for  herself  in  "in- 
teresting circles"  in  the  great  city  and  was  more  or  less 
talked  about.  "Hazel  is  jealous  of  her,"  Milly  averred. 
Nevertheless  the  junior  editor's  wife  accepted  Mrs.  Bill- 
man's  patronage  and  invitations  to  Mrs.  Bunker's  opera 
box  when  it  was  given  on  off  nights  or  matin6es  to  the  chief 
editor's  wife,  and  in  turn  she  was  inclined  to  patronize  Mrs. 
Bragdon  by  sending  her  tickets  to  improving  lectures  and 
concerts. 

Hazel  Fredericks,  in  her  quiet  and  self-effacing  manner, 
had  aspirations,  Milly  suspected.  She  could  not  compete 
either  with  Mrs.  Howard  Bunker  or  Mrs.  Montgomery 
Billman,  of  course,  but  she  aspired  to  the  Serious  and  the 
Distinguished,  instead  of  the  Rich  or  the  merely  Artistic. 
She  went  in  for  "movements"  of  all  sorts  and  was  a  member 
of  various  leagues,  and  associations,  and  committees.  Occa- 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  261 

sionally  her  name  got  into  public  print.  Just  at  present 
she  was  in  the  "  woman  movement,"  about  which  she  talked 
to  Milly  a  good  deal.  That  promised  to  be  the  most  im- 
portant of  all  her  "  movements."  .  i 

Indeed,  as  Milly  saw,  all  these  women  "went  in"  for 
something.  They  tried  to  conduct  their  lives  and  their  hus- 
bands' lives  on  lines  of  definite  accomplishment,  and  she  was 
decidedly  "old-fashioned"  in  living  hers  from  day  to  day 
for  what  it  offered  of  amusement  or  ennui.  She  was  rather 
proud  of  the  fact  that  she  had  never  deliberately  "gone  in" 
for  anything  in  her  life  except  Love. 

Nevertheless,  she  found  the  flutter  of  women's  ambitions 
exciting  and  liked  to  observe  the  indirect  working  of  their 
wills  even  in  the  man's  game.  .  .  . 

"Mrs.  Billman  is  too  obvious,  don't  you  think  Jack?" 
she  said  to  her  husband.  But  Jack  had  gone  sound  asleep. 


IV 

THE   HEAD   OF   THE   HOUSE 

BEFORE  the  winter  they  were  established  in  their  own 
home,  in  a  corner  of  the  new  East  River  Terrace  Building, 
and  thereafter  their  life  settled  down  on  the  lines  it  was  to 
follow  in  New  York.  Their  acquaintance  gradually  widened 
from  Bunker1  s  and  the  editorial  set  to  other  circles,  con- 
tiguous and  remote,  and  the  daily  routine  brought  husband 
and  wife  less  often  into  contact,  and  they  were  thrown  less 
and  less  on  each  other's  resources.  As  the  artist  no  longer 
tried  to  work  at  home,  the  large  room  designed  for  studio 
became  the  living-room  of  their  apartment.  Bragdon  went 
off  immediately  after  his  breakfast  to  the  magazine  office, 
like  a  business  man,  and  as  Milly  usually  had  her  coffee  in 
bed  they  rarely  met  before  dinner.  Sometimes  he  came 
back  from  the  office  early  to  play  with  Virgie  before  her 
supper  time,  but  Milly  usually  appeared  about  seven,  just 
in  time  to  dress  for  dinner. 

If  she  ever  stopped  to  think  of  it,  this  seemed  the  suit- 
able, normal  relation  of  husband  and  wife.  He  had  his 
business,  and  she  had  hers.  Sundays  when  he  did  not  go 
to  the  office,  he  dawdled  through  the  morning  at  his  club, 
talking  with  men  or  writing  letters,  and  they  often  had 
people  to  luncheon,  which  consumed  the  afternoons.  On 
pleasant  days  he  might  take  the  child  to  the  Park  or  even 
into  the  distant  country.  He  was  very  devoted  to  his 

262 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  263 

little  girl  and  on  the  whole  a  considerate  and  kindly  husband. 
Milly  thought  she  had  forgiven  him  for  breaking  her  heart. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  less  forgiveness  than  forgetting 
in  this  world.  Milly  felt  that  on  the  whole  "they  got  on 
quite  well"  and  prided  herself  on  her  wise  restraint  and 
patience  with  her  husband  "at  that  time." 

The  household  ran  smoothly.  At  first  there  were  only 
two  maids,  —  the  second  one  serving  as  nurse  for  Virginia 
and  Milly's  personal  helper  as  well,  —  a  triumph  of  economic 
management,  as  Milly  pointed  out.  For  Hazel  Fredericks 
had  two  merely  for  household  purposes  and  the  Billman's 
house  boasted  of  four  and  a  boy  in  buttons.  They  had  to 
have  the  laundry  done  outside  and  engage  extra  service 
when  they  entertained.  By  the  end  of  the  first  year  Milly 
convinced  herself  it  would  be  cheaper  to  have  three  regular 
servants,  and  still  they  depended  more  or  less  on  outside 
help.  .  .  „ 

They  saved  nothing,  of  course.  Few  Americans  of  their 
class  ever  save.  They  were  young,  and  the  future  seemed 
large.  Living  in  New  York  was  horribly  expensive,  as 
every  one  was  saying,  and  it  was  worse  the  more  they  got 
to  know  people  and  had  their  own  little  place  to  keep  in 
the  world.  It  seemed  to  Milly  hard  that  such  perfectly 
nice  people  as  they  were  should  be  so  cramped  for  the  means 
to  enjoy  the  opportunities  that  came  to  them.  The  first 
year  they  spent  only  five  thousand  dollars  and  paid  some- 
thing towards  the  huge  loan  on  their  apartment.  The 
second  year  it  was  seven  thousand  and  they  paid  nothing, 
and  the  third  year  they  started  at  a  rate  of  ten  thousand 
dollars.  The  figures  were  really  small  when  one  considered 


264  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

what  the  other  people  they  knew  were  spending.  Bragdon 
began  to  suspect  that  here  was  the  trouble  —  they  didn't 
know  any  poor  people!  Milly  said  they  " barely  lived," 
as  it  was.  Of  course  there  were  good  people  who  got  along 
on  three  or  four  thousand  dollars  a  year  and  even  indulged 
occasionally  in  a  child  or  two  —  professors  and  young 
painters  and  that  sort.  Milly  could  not  see  how  it  was 
done,  —  probably  in  ghastly  apartments  out  in  the  hinter- 
land, like  the  Reddons.  The  newspapers  advertised  aston- 
ishing bargains  in  houses,  but  they  were  always  in  fan- 
tastically named  suburban  places,  "  within  commuting 
distance."  One  had  to  live  where  one's  friends  could  get 
to  you,  or  go  without  people,  Milly  observed. 

Husband  and  wife  discussed  all  this,  as  every  one  did. 
The  cost  of  living,  the  best  way  of  meeting  the  problem, 
whether  by  city  or  suburb  or  country,  was  the  most  frequent 
topic  of  conversation  in  all  circles,  altogether  crowding  out 
the  weather  and  scandal.  At  first  Jack  was  severe  about 
the  leaping  scale  of  expenditure  and  inclined  to  hold  his 
wife  accountable  for  it  as  " extravagance."  He  would  even 
talk  of  giving  up  their  pretty  home  and  going  to  some  im- 
possible suburb,  —  "and  all  that  nonsense,"  as  Milly  put 
it  to  her  closest  friend,  Hazel  Fredericks.  But  Milly  always 
proved  to  him  that  they  could  not  do  better  and  "get  any- 
thing out  of  life."  So  in  the  position  of  one  who  is  sliding 
down  hill  in  a  sandy  soil,  he  saw  that  it  was  useless  to  stick 
his  feet  in  and  hold  on  —  he  must  instead  learn  to  plunge 
and  leap  and  thus  make  progress.  And  he  did  what  every 
one  was  doing,  —  tried  to  make  more  money.  It  was  easy, 
seemingly,  in  this  tumultuous  New  York  to  make  money 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  265 

"on  the  side."  There  were  many  chances  of  what  he 
cynically  called  " artistic  graft,"  —  editing,  articles,  and 
illustration.  One  had  merely  to  put  out  a  hand  and  strip 
the  fat  branches  of  the  laden  tree.  It  was  killing  to  creative 
work,  but  it  was  much  easier  than  sordid  discussion  of 
budget  with  one's  wife.  For  the  American  husband  is 
ashamed  to  confess  poverty  to  the  wife  of  his  bosom. 

Milly,  perceiving  this  power  of  money-getting  on  her 
husband's  part,  did  not  take  very  seriously  his  complaints 
of  their  expenditure.  Even  when  they  were  in  debt,  as 
they  usually  were,  she  was  sure  it  would  come  out  right  in 
the  end.  It  always  had.  Jack  had  found  a  way  to  make 
the  extra  sums  needed  to  wipe  out  the  accumulation  of 
bills.  Bragdon  might  feel  misgivings,  but  he  was  too  busy 
these  days  in  the  gymnastic  performance  of  keeping  his 
feet  from  the  sliding  sand  to  indulge  in  long  reflection. 
Perhaps,  in  a  mood  of  depression,  induced  by  grippe  or  the 
coming  on  of  languid  spring  days,  he  would  say,  "  Milly, 
let's  quit  this  game  —  it's  no  good  —  you  don't  get  any- 
where !" 

Milly,  recognizing  the  symptoms,  would  bring  him  a  cock- 
tail, prepared  by  her  own  skilful  hand  and  murmur  sweetly, — 

"What  would  you  like  to  do?" 

This  was  her  role  of  wife,  submissive  to  the  "head  of  the 
house." 

That  archaic  phrase,  which  Milly  used  with  a  malicious 
pompousness  when  she  wished  to  "put  something  hard  up" 
to  her  lord,  was  of  course  an  ironical  misnomer  in  this  modern 
household.  In  the  first  place  there  was  no  house,  which 


266  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

demanded  the  service  and  the  protection  of  a  strong  male, 

—  merely  a  partitioned-off  corner  in  a  ten-story  brick  box, 
where  no  man  was  necessary  even  to  shake  the  furnace  or 
lock  the  front  door.     It  was  "house"  only  symbolically, 
and  within  its  limited  space  the  minimum  of  necessary  ser- 
vice was  performed  by  hirelings  (engaged  by  the  mistress 
and  under  her  orders).     Almost  all  the  necessities  for  exist- 
ence were  manufactured  outside  and  paid  for  at  the  end  of 
each  month  (supposably)  by  the  mistress  with  little  colored 
slips  of  paper  called  cheques.     In  the  modern  world  the 
function  of  the  honorable  head  of  the  house  had  thus  been 
reduced  to  providing  the  banking  deposit  necessary  for  the 
little  strips  of  colored  paper.     He  had  been  gradually  re- 
lieved of  all  other  duties,  stripped  of  his  honors,  and  become 
Bank   Account.     The   woman   was   the   real   head   of   the 
house  because  she  controlled  the  expenditures. 

"I  draw  all  the  cheques,"  Hazel  Fredericks  explained  to 
Milly,  "  even  for  Stanny's  club  bills — it  is  so  much  easier." 

That  was  the  perfect  thing,  Milly  thought,  forgetting  that 
she  had  once  tried  this  plan  with  disastrous  results  and  had 
returned  to  the  allowance  system  with  relief.  Most  men, 
she  felt,  were  tyrannical  and  arbitrary  by  nature,  especially 
in  money  matters,  or  as  she  sometimes  called  her  husband, 

—  "  Turks."     She  often  discussed  the  relation  of  the  sexes 
in  marriage  with  Hazel   Fredericks,   who  had   "modern" 
views  and  leant  her  books  on  the  woman  movement  and 
suffrage.     Although    she    instinctively    disliked     "strong- 
minded  women,"  she  felt  there  was  great  injustice  in  the 
present  situation  between  men  and  women.     "  It  is  a  man's- 
world,"  became  one  of  her  favorite  axioms.     She  could  not 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  267 

deny  that  her  husband  was  kind,  —  she  often  boasted  of 
his  generosity  to  her  friends,  —  and  she  knew  that  he  spent 
very  little  on  his  own  pleasures :  whatever  there  was  the 
family  had  it.  But  it  always  humiliated  her  to  go  to  him 
for  money,  when  she  was  behind,  and  in  his  sterner  moods 
try  to  coax  it  from  him.  This  was  the  way  women  had 
always  been  forced  to  do  with  their  masters,  and  it  was,  of 
course,  all  wrong:  it  classed  the  wife  with  " horrid"  women, 
who  made  men  pay  them  for  their  complaisance. 

Ideas  on  all  these  subjects  were  in  the  air :  all  the  women 
Milly  knew  talked  of  the  "dawn  of  the  woman  era,"  the 
coming  emancipation  of  the  sex  from  its  world-old  degrada- 
tion. Milly  vaguely  believed  it  would  mean  that  every 
woman  should  have  her  own  check-book  and  not  be  account- 
able to  any  man  for  what  she  chose  to  spend.  She  amplified 
this  point  of  view  to  Reinhard,  who  liked  "the  little  Brag- 
dons"  and  often  came  to  their  new  home.  Milly  especially 
amused  him  in  his  r61e  of  student  of  the  coming  sex.  He 
liked  to  see  her  experiment  with  ideas  and  mischievously 
encouraged  her  "revolt"  as  he  called  it.  They  had  tea 
together,  took  walks  in  the  Park,  and  sometimes  went  to 
concerts.  He  was  very  kind  to  them  both,  and  Milly 
regarded  him  as  their  most  influential  friend.  She  felt 
that  the  novelist  would  make  a  very  good  husband,  under- 
standing as  he  did  so  thoroughly  the  woman's  point  of  view. 

"I'm  not  a  'new  woman,'  of  course,"  Milly  always  con- 
cluded her  discourse. 

"Of  course  you're  not !"  the  novelist  heartily  concurred. 
"That's  why  you  are  so  interesting,  —  you  represent  an  al- 
most extinct  species,  —  just  woman." 


268  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"  I  know  I'm  old-fashioned  —  Hazel  always  says  so.  I 
believe  in  men  doing  the  voting  and  all  that.  Women 
should  not  try  to  be  like  men  —  their  strength  is  their 
difference  !" 

"You  want  just  to  be  Queen?"   Reinhard  suggested. 

"Oh/'  Milly  sighed,  "I  want  what  every  woman  wants 
—  just  to  be  loved." 

She  implied  that  with  the  perfect  love,  all  these  minor 
difficulties  would  adjust  themselves  easily.  But  the  woman 
without  love  must  fight  for  her  "rights,"  whatever  they  were. 

"Oh,  of  course,"  the  novelist  murmured  sympathetically. 
In  all  his  varied  experience  with  the  sex  he  had  found  few 
women  who  would  admit  that  they  were  properly  loved. 

Milly's  daily  programme  at  this  time  will  be  illuminating, 
because  it  was  much  like  the  lives  of  many  thousands  of 
young  married  women,  in  our  transition  period.  As  there 
was  no  complicated  house  and  only  one  child  to  be  looked 
after,  the  mere  housekeeping  duties  were  not  burdensome, 
especially  as  Milly  never  thought  of  going  to  market  or 
store  for  anything,  merely  telephoned  for  what  the  cook 
said  they  must  have,  or  left  it  to  the  servant  altogether. 
She  woke  late,  read  the  newspaper  and  her  mail  over  her 
coffee,  played  with  Virgie  and  told  her  charming  stories ; 
then,  by  ten  o'clock,  dressed,  and  her  housekeeping  arranged 
for,  she  was  ready  to  set  forth.  Usually  she  had  some  sort 
of  shopping  that  took  her  down  town  until  luncheon,  and 
more  often  than  not  lunched  out  with  a  friend. 

Occasionally  on  a  fine  day  when  she  had  nothing  better 
to  do,  she  took  Virginia  into  the  Park  for  an  hour  after 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  269 

luncheon.  Usually,  however,  the  child's  promenade  was 
left  to  Louise.  Her  afternoons  were  varied  and  crowded. 
Sometimes  she  went  to  lectures  or  to  see  pictures,  because 
this  was  part  of  that  "culture"  essential  for  the  modern 
woman.  Old  friends  from  Chicago  had  to  be  called  upon 
or  taken  to  tea  and  entertained,  and  there  was  the  ever 
enlarging  circle  of  new  friends,  chiefly  women,  who  made 
constant  demands  on  her  time.  She  finished  Her  day, 
breathlessly,  just  in  time  to  dress  for  dinner.  They  went 
out  more  and  more,  because  people  liked  them,  and  when 
they  stayed  at  home,  they  had  people  in  " quite  informally" 
and  talked  until  late  hours.  On  the  rare  occasions  when 
they  were  alone  Milly  curled  up  on  the  divan  before  the  fire 
and  dozed  until  she  went  to  bed,  —  "dead  tired." 

There  was  scarcely  a  single  productive  moment  in  these 
busy  days.  Yet  Milly  would  have  resented  the  accusation 
that  she  was  an  idle  woman  in  any  sense.  She  had  the 
feeling  of  being  pressed,  of  striving  to  overtake  her  engage- 
ments, which  gave  a  pleasant  touch  of  excitement  to  city 
existence.  That  she  should  DO  anything  more  than  keep 
their  small  home  running  smoothly  and  pleasantly  —  an 
attractive  spot  for  friends  to  come  to  —  and  keep  herself 
personally  as  smart  and  youthful  and  desirable  as  her  cir- 
cumstances permitted,  she  would  never  admit.  A  woman's 
hold  on  the  world,  she  was  convinced,  lay  in  her  looks  and 
her  charms,  not  in  her  character.  And  what  man  who  had 
anything  of  a  man  in  him  would  expect  more  of  his  wife? 
.  .  .  Her  husband,  at  any  rate,  gave  no  sign  of  expecting 
more  from  his  wife.  All  their  friends  considered  them  a 
contented  and  delightful  young  couple.  .  .  . 


270  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

It  should  be  added  that  Milly  was  a  member  of  the  "  Con- 
sumers' League,"  though  she  paid  no  attention  to  their  rules, 
and  had  been  put  on  a  "  Woman's  Immigration  Bureau"  at  the 
instance  of  Hazel  Fredericks,  who  was  active  in  that  move- 
ment just  then.  She  also  had  a  number  of  poor  families  to 
look  after,  to  whom  she  was  supposed  to  act  as  friend  and 
guide.  She  fulfilled  this  obligation  by  raising  money  for 
them  from  the  men  she  knew.  "What  most  people  need 
most  is  money,  "Milly  philosophized.  .  .  .  All  told,  her  pub- 
lic activities  occupied  Milly  a  little  more  than  an  hour  a 
week. 

As  a  whole,  Milly  looked  back  over  her  life  in  New  York 
with  satisfaction.  They  had  a  pleasant  if  somewhat  cramped 
home  and  a  great  many  warm  friends  who  were  very  kind 
to  them.  They  were  both  well,  as  a  rule,  though  usually  tired, 
as  every  one  was,  and  the  child,  though  delicate,  was  reasonably 
well.  Jack  was  liked  at  Bunker's,  and  his  periods  of  de- 
pression and  restlessness  became  less  frequent.  They 
were  settling  down  properly  into  their  place  in  the  scheme  of 
things.  But  sometimes  Milly  found  life  monotonous  and  a 
trifle  gray,  even  in  New  York. 

"Love  is  the  only  thing  in  a  woman's  life  that  can  compen- 
sate !"  she  confided  to  Clive  Reinhard. 

And  the  novelist,  trained  confessor  of  women's  souls,  let 
her  think  that  he  understood. 


A   SHOCK 

MILLY  supposed  their  life  would  go  on  indefinitely  like 
this.  She  lived  much  in  the  slight  fluctuations  of  the  pres- 
ent, with  its  immediate  gratifications  and  tribulations.  It 
seemed  to  her  foolish  to  take  long  views,  as  Jack  did  some- 
times, and  wonder  what  the  years  might  bring  forth.  Life 
had  always  been  full  enough  of  interesting  change. 

The  most  disturbing  fact  at  present  was  the  difficulty  they 
had  in  deciding  where  to  go  for  the  summers.  The  question 
came  up  every  spring,  the  first  warm  days  of  March,  when 
Bragdon  developed  fag  and  headaches.  Then  it  was  he 
would  suggest  " chucking  the  whole  thing,"  but  that  ob- 
viously, with  their  present  way  of  living,  they  could  not  do. 
So  it  resolved  itself  into  a  discussion  of  boarding-places. 
It  had  to  be  some  place  near  enough  the  city  to  permit  of 
Bragdon's  going  to  his  office  at  least  three  or  four  times  a  week. 
One  summer  they  boarded  at  an  inferior  hotel  on  Long  Island. 
That  had  been  unsatisfactory  because  of  the  food  and  the 
people.  Another  summer  they  took  a  furnished  cottage,  in 
Connecticut.  That  had  been  hot,  and  Milly  found  house- 
keeping throughout  the  year  burdensome  —  and  it  may 
be  added  expensive.  As  the  third  summer  approached, 
Bragdon  talked  of  staying  in  the  city  until  midsummer. 
Milly  and  the  child  could  go  to  the  Maine  coast  with  the 

271 


272  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

Fredericks,  and  he  would  join  them  for  a  few  weeks  in  August. 
Milly  accepted  this  compromise  as  a  happy  solution  and 
looked  forward  to  a  really  cool  and  restful  summer. 

While  she  was  making  her  arrangements,  there  was  a 
threatened  upheaval  in  their  life.  This  time  it  was  the 
magazine.  There  had  been  growing  friction  in  Bunker's 
for  some  time.  The  magazine,  having  to  maintain  its  repu- 
tation, had  become  more  and  more  radical,  while  the  pro- 
prietor, under  the  influence  of  prosperity  and  increasing  years, 
had  become  more  conservative. 

"You  see,"  Hazel  Fredericks  explained,  "the  Bunkers 
find  reform  isn't  fashionable  the  farther  up  they  get,  and  the 
magazine  is  committed  to  reform  and  so  is  Billman.  There 
must  be  a  break  some  day." 

She  further  hinted  that  if  it  had  not  been  for  Grace's 
strong  hand,  the  break  would  have  already  come. 

"She's  not  ready  for  Montie  to  get  out,  yet,"  she  said. 

Milly  was  much  interested  in  the  intrigue,  but  she  could 
learn  little  from  her  husband,  who  always  expressed  a  weary 
disgust  with  the  topic.  One  evening  in  early  June,  just 
before  her  departure,  he  told  her  that  Bunker's  had  changed 
hands:  a  "syndicate"  had  bought  it,  and  he  professed  not 
to  know  whose  money  was  in  the  syndicate.  Hazel  hinted 
that  Grace  Billman  knew.  .  .  . 

Bragdon  seemed  more  than  usually  fagged  this  spring, 
after  his  annual  attack  of  the  grippe.  He  had  not  recovered 
quickly,  and  his  face  was  white  and  flabby,  as  the  faces  of 
city  men  commonly  were  in  the  spring.  Milly  noticed  the 
languor  in  his  manner  when  he  came  to  the  train  to  see  her 
off  for  the  summer. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  273 

"Do  be  careful  of  yourself,  Jack,"  she  counselled  with 
genuine  concern.  He  did  not  reply,  merely  kissed  the  little 
girl,  and  smiled  wearily. 

"Try  to  get  away  early  —  in  July,"  were  her  last  words. 

Jack  nodded  and  turned  back  to  the  steaming  city.  Milly, 
reflecting  with  a  sigh  that  her  husband  was  usually  like  this 
in  the  spring,  sank  back  into  her  chair  and  opened  Life. 
For  several  weeks  after  that  parting  she  heard  nothing  from 
Jack,  although  she  wrote  with  what  for  her  was  great 
promptness.  Then  she  received  a  brief  letter  that  contained 
the  astonishing  news  of  his  having  left  the  magazine.  "  There 
have  been  changes  in  the  new  management,"  he  wrote,  "and 
it  seemed  best  to  get  out."  But  neither  Billman  nor  Freder- 
icks had  felt  obliged  to  leave  the  magazine,  she  learned  from 
Hazel. 

She  could  not  understand.  She  telegraphed  for  further 
details  and  urged  him  to  join  her  at  once  and  take  his  vaca- 
tion. He  replied  vaguely  that  some  work  was  detaining  him  in 
the  city,  and  that  he  might  come  later.  "  The  city  isn't  bad," 
he  said.  And  with  that  Milly  had  to  content  herself.  .  .  . 
The  summer  place  filled  rapidly,  and  she  was  occupied  with 
immediate  interests.  She  said  to  Hazel,  —  "It's  so  foolish  of 
Jack  to  stay  there  in  that  hot  city  when  he  might  be  comfort- 
ably resting  here  with  us  !"  Hazel  made  no  reply,  and  Milly 
vaguely  wondered  if  she  knew  more  about  the  situation  on 
the  magazine  than  she  would  tell. 

It  was  in  August,  in  a  sweltering  heat  which  made  itself 

felt  even  beside  the  Maine  sea,  that  a  telegram  came  from 

Clive  Reinhard,  very  brief  but  none  the  less  disturbing. 

"Your  husband   here   ill  —  better   come."     The    telegram 

T 


274  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

was  dated  from  Caromneck,  —  Reinhard's  place  on  the 
Sound.  .  .  . 

By  the  time  Milly  had  made  the  long  journey  her  husband 
was  dead.  Reinhard  met  her  at  the  station  in  his  car.  She 
always  remembered  afterwards  that  gravelly  patch  before 
the  station,  with  its  rows  of  motor-cars  waiting  for  the  men 
about  to  arrive  from  the  city  on  the  afternoon  trains,  and 
Reinhard's  dark  little  face,  which  did  not  smile  at  her 
approach. 

"He  was  sick  when  he  came  out," he  explained  brusquely; 
"don't  believe  he  ever  got  over  that  last  attack  of  grippe. 
...  It  was  pneumonia :  the  doctor  said  his  heart  was  too 
weak." 

It  was  the  commonplace  story  of  the  man  working  at  high 
pressure,  often  under  stimulants,  who  has  had  the  grippe 
to  weaken  him,  so  that  when  the  strain  comes  there  is  no 
resistance,  no  reserve.  He  snaps  like  a  sapped  reed.  .  .  . 
The  tears  rolled  down  Milly's  face,  and  Reinhard  looked  away. 
He  said  nothing,  and  for  the  first  time  Milly  thought  him 
hard  and  unsympathetic.  When  the  car  drew  up  before  his 
door,  he  helped  her  down  and  silently  led  the  way  to  the 
darkened  room  on  the  floor  above,  then  left  her  alone  with 
her  dead  husband. 

When  a  woman  looks  on  the  face  of  her  dead  comrade, 
it  should  not  be  altogether  sad.  Something  of  the  joy  and 
the  tenderness  of  their  intimacy  should  rise  then  to  temper 
the  sharpness  of  her  grief.  It  was  not  so  with  Milly.  It 
was  wholly  horrible  to  plunge  thus,  as  it  were,  from  the  blind- 
ing light  of  the  full  summer  day  into  the  gloom  of  death. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  275 

Her  husband's  face  seemed  shrunken  and  pallid,  but  curiously 
youthful.  Into  it  had  crept  again  something  of  that  boyish 
confidence  —  the  joyous  swagger  of  youth  —  which  he  had 
when  they  sat  in  the  Chicago  beer-garden.  It  startled 
Milly,  who  had  not  recalled  those  days  for  a  long  time. 
Underneath  his  mustache  the  upper  lip  was  twisted  as  if  in 
pain,  and  the  sunken  eyes  were  mercifully  closed.  He  had 
gone  back  to  his  youth,  the  happy  time  of  strength  and  hope 
when  he  had  expected  to  be  a  painter.  .  .  . 

Milly  fell  on  her  knees  by  his  side  and  sobbed  without 
restraint.  Yet  her  grief  was  less  for  him  than  for  herself,  — 
rather,  perhaps,  for  them  both.  Somehow  they  had  missed 
the  beautiful  dream  they  had  dreamed  together  eight  years 
before  in  the  beer-garden.  She  realized  bitterly  that  their 
married  life,  which  should  have  been  so  wonderful,  had  come 
to  the  petty  reality  of  these  latter  days.  So  she  sobbed  and 
sobbed,  her  head  buried  on  the  pillow  beside  his  still  head  — 
grieved  for  him,  for  herself,  for  life.  And  the  dead  man  lay 
there  on  the  white  bed,  in  the  dim  light,  with  his  closed  eyes, 
that  mirage  of  recovered  youth  haunting  his  pale  cheeks. 

When  she  left  him  after  a  time,  Reinhard  met  her  in  the 
hall.  She  was  not  conscious  of  the  swift,  furtive  glance  he 
gave  her,  as  if  he  would  discover  in  her  that  last  intimacy  with 
her  husband.  When  he  spoke,  he  was  very  gentle  with  her. 
He  was  about  to  motor  into  the  city  to  make  some  arrange- 
ments and  would  not  return  until  the  morning,  leaving  to  her 
the  silent  house  with  her  dead.  She  was  conscious  of  all  his 
kindness  and  delicate  forethought,  and  mumbled  her  thanks. 
He  had  already  notified  Bragdon's  older  brother,  who  was 
coming  from  the  Adirondacks  and  would  attend  to  all  the 


276  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

necessary  things  for  her.  As  he  turned  to  leave,  Milly 
stopped  him  with  a  half  question, — 

"I  didn't  know  Jack  was  visiting  you." 

The  novelist  hastened  to  reply :  — 

"You  see  he  had  promised  to  do  another  book  for  me,  and 
came  out  to  talk  it  over.  That  was  last  Saturday." 

"Oh  I" 

"He  was  not  well  then,"  he  added,  and  then  he  went. 

He  never  told  her  —  she  never  knew  —  that  he  had  run 
across  Bragdon  quite  by  accident  one  day  of  awful  heat, 
and  stopped  to  exchange  a  few  words  with  an  old  friend  he 
had  not  seen  for  some  time.  Bragdon  had  the  limp  ap- 
pearance of  a  man  thoroughly  done  by  the  heat,  and  also 
to  the  novelist's  keen  eye  the  mentally  listless  attitude  of 
the  man  who  has  been  done  by  life  before  his  time,  —  the 
look  of  one  who  knows  he  is  not  "making  good"  in  the  fight. 
That  was  what  had  tortured  the  lip  beneath  the  mustache. 

So  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  he  had  suggested  to  the 
artist  the  new  book,  though  he  knew  that  his  publisher  would 
demur.  For  his  fame  had  raised  him  altogether  out  of  Brag- 
don's  class.  But  it  was  the  only  tangible  way  of  putting  out 
that  helping  hand  the  artist  so  obviously  needed  just  then. 
Bragdon  had  hesitated,  as  if  he  knew  the  motive  prompting 
the  offer,  then  accepted,  and  the  two  had  motored  out  of  the 
city  together  that  evening.  Even  then  the  artist  had  a  high 
fever.  .  .  . 

That  night  Milly  lived  over  like  a  vivid  nightmare  her 
married  life  down  to  the  least  detail,  —  the  time  of  golden 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  277 

hopes  and  aspirations,  Paris  and  Europe,  her  disillusionment, 
the  futile  scurry  of  their  life  in  New  York,  which  she  realized 
was  a  compromise  without  much  result.  ...  It  ended  in  a 
choke  rather  than  a  sob.  There  was  so  little  left ! 

In  the  morning  Reinhard  reappeared  with  her  brother-in- 
law.  She  remembered  little  of  what  was  done  afterwards, 
in  the  usual,  ordered  way,  until  after  the  brief  service  and  the 
journey  to  the  grave  she  was  left  alone  in  their  old  home. 
She  had  wished  to  be  alone.  So  Hazel  Fredericks  took 
Virginia  to  the  Reddons  and  left  Milly  for  this  night  and 
day  to  collect  herself  from  her  blow  and  decide  with  her 
brother-in-law's  help  just  what  she  should  do. 


VI 

THE    SECRET 

THE  large  "  studio  "  room  of  the  apartment  had  an  unfamil- 
iar air  of  disorder liness  about  it.  Bragdon's  easel  was  there 
and  his  uncleaned  palette.  Also  a  number  of  canvases  were 
scattered  about.  These  last  weeks,  after  he  had  left  the 
magazine  —  voluntarily  as  Milly  now  learned  —  he  had  got 
together  all  his  painter's  things  and  worked  hi  the  empty 
apartment.  When  Milly  began  to  pick  up  the  odds  and 
ends,  she  was  surprised  at  the  number  of  canvases.  A  few 
of  them  she  recognized  as  pictures  he  had  attempted  in  his 
brief  vacations.  Almost  everything  was  unfinished  —  merely 
an  impression  seized  here  and  there  and  vigorously  dashed 
down  in  color,  as  if  the  artist  were  afraid  of  losing  its  definite 
outline  in  the  rush  and  interruption  of  his  life.  Nothing 
was  really  finished  she  saw,  as  she  turned  the  canvases  back 
to  the  wall,  one  by  one.  Tears  started  to  her  eyes  again. 
The  tragedy  of  life  was  like  the  tragedy  of  death  —  the 
incomplete  !  The  nearest  thing  to  a  finished  picture  was  the 
group  done  in  Brittany  of  herself,  Yvonne,  and  the  baby 
on  the  gleaming  sands,  which  he  had  tried  to  get  ready  for 
the  New  York  exhibition  on  their  return.  That  had  the  su- 
perficial finish  of  mechanical  work  from  which  the  creator's 
inspiration  has  already  departed.  With  a  sigh  she  turned  it 
to  the  wall  with  the  others,  and  somehow  she  recalled  what 
Reinhard  has  said  once  about  her  husband. 

278 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  279 

"He  had  more  of  the  artist  in  him  than  any  of  us  when  he 
was  in  college  —  what  has  become  of  it  ?" 

The  remark  stabbed  her  now.  What  had  he  done  with 
his  gift  —  what  had  they  made  of  it  ?  ... 

She  came  to  the  last  things, —  the  canvas  he  had  been 
working  on  the  day  his  friend  had  found  him.  The  touch 
of  fever  was  in  it,  —  a  grotesque  head,  —  but  it  was  as  vivid 
as  fresh  paint.  Yes,  he  had  been  one  who  could  see  things  ! 
She  had  a  sense  of  pride  in  the  belief. 

Another  of  Reinhard's  sayings  came  back  to  her,  — • 

"It's  all  accident  from  the  very  beginning  in  the  womb  what 
comes  to  any  of  us,  and  most  of  all  whether  we  catch  on  in  the 
game  of  life,  whether  we  fit !" 

The  novelist  himself,  she  knew,  had  not  "caught  on"  at 
first.  He  had  confessed  to  her  that  he  had  almost  starved 
in  New  York,  writing  stories  that  nobody  would  read  and 
few  publishers  could  be  induced  to  print  —  then.  They  were 
the  uttermost  best  he  had  in  him,  and  some  had  been  success- 
ful since,  but  they  didn't  fit  then.  Suddenly  he  arrived  by 
accident.  A  slight  thing  he  had  done  caught  the  fancy  of  an 
actress,  who  had  a  play  made  out  of  it,  in  which  she  was  a 
great  success.  A  sort  of  reflected  glory  came  to  the  author 
of  the  story,  and  the  actress  with  unusual  generosity  paid 
him  a  good  sum  of  money.  From  that  first  touch  of  golden 
success  he  had  become  a  different  man.  His  new  and  popular 
period  set  in  when  he  wrote  stories  about  rich  and  childish 
boys  and  girls  and  their  silly  love  affairs.  Hazel  Fredericks 
and  her  set  affected  to  despise  them,  but  they  were  immensely 
popular. 

If  he  had  sold  himself,  as  his  critics  said,  he  had  made  a 


280  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

sharp  bargain  with  the  devil.  He  had  become  prosperous, 
well-known,  envied,  invited.  Milly  had  always  admired 
his  intelligence  in  grasping  his  chance  when  it  came. 

She  remembered  now  another  story  about  the  popular 
novelist.  He  had  never  married,  and  the  flippant  explanation 
of  the  fact  was  that  he  was  under  contract  with  his  publishers 
not  to  marry  until  he  was  fifty  in  order  not  to  impair  his 
popularity  among  his  bonbon-eating  clientele,  who  wrote 
him  intimate,  scented  letters.  But  she  knew  the  truth. 
She  had  the  story  from  the  sister  of  the  girl,  whom  she  had 
met  in  Paris.  The  girl  was  poor  and  trying  to  paint ;  they 
met  in  the  garret-days  when  Reinhard  "was  writing  to  please 
himself,"  as  they  say.  The  two  were  obviously  deeply  in 
love,  and  only  their  common  poverty,  it  was  supposed, 
prevented  the  marriage.  It  was  still  desperate  love  when 
the  fortunate  accident  befell  Reinhard  that  led  him  out  of 
obscurity  to  fame.  It  was  then  that  the  affair  had  been 
broken  off.  The  sister  found  the  poor  girl  in  tears  with  a 
horrible  resolve  to  throw  herself  away.  (Later  she  married 
a  rich  man,  and  was  very  happy  with  him,  the  sister 
averred.)  Milly  had  always  felt  that  Reinhard  must  have 
been  "hard"  with  this  poor  girl,  —  he  would  not  let  his  feel- 
ing for  her  stand  in  the  way  of  his  career.  Now  she  under- 
stood better  why  he  would  have  none  of  her  sex  except  as 
buyers  of  his  wares.  She  admired  him  and  disliked  him  for 
it  all  at  once.  That  was  what  Jack  should  have  done  with 
her.  But  he  was  too  tender-hearted,  too  much  the  mere 
man.  .  .  .  Oh,  well,  these  artists  with  their  needs  and  their 
temperaments ! 

Slowly  Milly  went  over  all  the  sketches,  one  by  one.    It 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  281 

was  like  a  fragmentary  diary  of  the  life  she  had  lived  beside 
and  not  looked  at  closely  while  it  was  in  being.  She  was 
surprised  there  were  so  many  recent  ones  —  all  unfinished. 
She  could  not  recall  when  he  had  done  them  or  where.  It 
proved  that  Bragdon  had  never  really  given  up  the  idea  of 
painting.  The  desire  had  stung  him  all  the  time,  and 
every  now  and  then  he  must  have  yielded  to  it,  stealing 
away  from  the  piffling  duties  of  the  magazine  office  — 
spat  on  popular  art,  so  to  speak  —  and  shut  himself  away 
somewhere  to  forget  and  to  do.  Milly  remembered  certain 
unexplained  absences,  which  had  mystified  her  at  the  time 
and  aroused  suspicions  that  he  "was  having  another  affair." 
On  his  returns  he  had  been  morose  and  dispirited.  Evi- 
dently the  mistress  he  had  wooed  in  this  intermittent  and 
casual  fashion  had  not  been  kind.  But  the  desire  had 
never  left  him,  —  the  urge  to  paint,  to  create.  And  during 
these  last  desperate  days  when,  fevered,  he  was  stumbling 
towards  his  end,  he  had  seized  the  brush  and  gone  back  to  his 
real  work.  .  .  . 

At  last  she  had  reached  the  bottom  of  the  pile  —  the  Brit- 
tany sketches.  These  she  looked  over  as  one  might  views  of 
a  past  episode  in  life.  The  memories  of  those  foreign  days 
rushed  over  her  with  a  sad  sort  of  joy.  There,  they  had  been 
completely  happy  —  at  least  she  thought  so  now — until 
that  hateful  woman  had  taken  her  husband  from  her.  She 
had  almost  forgotten  the  Russian  baroness.  Now  with  a 
start  of  fresh  interest  she  thought  of  the  portrait  and  wondered 
where  it  was,  —  the  masterful  picture  of  the  one  who  had 
ruined  her  happiness.  She  looked  through  the  clutter  again, 
thinking  that  it  was  probably  with  the  Russian  wherever 


282  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

she  was.  But  the  portrait  was  there  with  the  rest,  wrapped 
carefully  in  a  piece  of  old  silk. 

With  eager  hands  Milly  undid  the  cover  of  the  picture  and 
dragged  it  forward  to  the  light.  It  was  as  if  an  old  passion 
had  burst  from  the  closet  of  the  past.  There  she  was,  long, 
lean,  cruel,  —  posed  on  her  haunches  with  upturned  smiling 
face,  —  "  The  woman  who  would  eat."  She  lived  there  on  the 
canvas,  eternally  young  and  strong.  Milly  could  admire  the 
mastery  of  the  painting  even  in  the  swell  of  her  hatred  for 
the  woman  who  had  taken  her  lover-husband  from  her.  He 
was  young  when  he  had  done  that,  —  barely  twenty-seven. 
A  man  who  could  paint  like  that  at  twenty-seven  ought 
to  have  gone  far.  Even  Milly  in  the  gloom  of  her  prejudiced 
soul  felt  something  like  awe  for  the  power  in  him,  which 
seemingly  justified  the  wrong  he  had  done  her.  Even  Milly 
perceived  the  tragic  laws  stronger  than  herself,  larger  than 
her  little  world  of  domestic  moralities.  And  thus,  gazing  on 
her  husband's  masterpiece,  she  realized  that  her  hatred  for 
the  woman  who  she  believed  had  done  her  the  greatest  wrong 
one  woman  can  do  another  was  not  real.  It  was  not  the 
Baroness  Saratoff  who  had  cheated  her :  it  was  life  itself ! 
She  no  longer  felt  eager  to  know  whether  they  had  been 
lovers,  —  as  the  saying  is,  had  " deceived"  her.  For  this 
ghostly  examination  of  her  husband's  work  convinced  her 
that  Jack  did  not  belong  to  her,  never  had,  —  the  stronger, 
better  part  of  him.  She  had  lived  for  eight  years,  more  or 
less  happily,  with  a  stranger.  She  understood  now  that 
domestic  intimacy,  the  petty  exchanges  of  daily  life,  even  the 
habit  of  physical  passion,  cannot  make  two  souls  one.  .  .  . 

She  turned  at  last  from  the  picture  with  weariness,  a  heavy 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  283 

heart.  It  had  all  been  wrong,  their  marriage,  and  still  more 
wrong  their  going  on  with  it  "in  the  brave  way."  Well, 
he  was  done  with  the  mistake  at  last,  and  he  could  not  be 
sorry.  She  was  almost  glad  for  him. 

Her  brother-in-law  had  asked  her  to  look  through  her 
husband's  papers  for  an  insurance  policy  he  thought  Jack 
had  taken  on  his  advice.  In  the  old  desk  Bragdon  had  used 
there  was  a  mass  of  letters  and  bills,  a  great  many  unpaid 
bills,  some  of  which  she  had  given  him  months  and  months 
before  and  had  supposed  were  paid.  There  were  two  letters 
in  an  odd  foreign  hand  that  she  knew  instantly  must  be  the 
Russian  woman's.  The  first  was  dated  from  the  manoir 
at  Klerac  on  the  evening  of  their  sudden  departure.  Milly 
hesitated  a  moment  as  if  she  must  respect  the  secrets  of 
the  dead,  then  with  a  last  trace  of  jealousy  tore  it  open  and 
read  the  lines  : — 

.  .  .  "So  you  have  decided  —  you  are  going  back.  You 
will  give  up  all  that  you  have  won,  all  that  might  be  yours,  — 
and  ours.  I  knew  it  would  be  so.  The  puritan  in  you  has 
won  the  day,  —  the  weak  side.  You  will  never  be  content 
with  what  you  are  doing,  never.  I  have  seen  far  enough 
within  your  soul  to  know  that.  ...  I  ask  nothing  for  my- 
self —  I  have  had  enough,  —  no,  not  that,  —  but  more  than  I 
could  hope.  But  for  you,  who  have  the  great  power  in  you, 
it  is  not  right.  You  cannot  live  like  that.  .  .  .  Some  day 
you  will  be  glad  as  I  am  that  we  were  not  little  people,  but 
drank  life  when  it  was  at  our  lips." 

Milly  dropped  the  letter  and  stared  blankly  at  the  dark  wall 
opposite.  What  it  revealed  did  not  come  to  her  with  shock, 


284  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

because  she  had  always  felt  sure  that  it  had  been  so.  What 
startled  her  was  the  realization  for  the  first  time  how  much 
the  experience  had  meant  to  both,  —  the  examination  of  the 
picture  and  the  silence  of  death  enabled  her  to  understand 
that.  He  had  had  the  strength  —  or  was  it  rather  weak- 
ness?—  to  do  "the  right  thing,"  to  renounce  love  and  ful- 
filment and  fame  because  of  her  and  their  child.  It  came 
over  her  in  a  flash  that  she  could  not  have  done  as  much. 
Give  up  love  that  was  strong  and  creative  —  no,  never,  not 
for  all  the  right  and  convention  on  the  earth.  Any  more 
than  the  Russian  woman  would  have  given  it  up  !  Women 
were  braver  than  men  sometimes. 

She  folded  the  letter  and  put  it  back  in  its  envelope  with 
a  curious  feeling  of  relief,  a  sort  of  gladness  that  he  had  had 
even  the  little  there  was  —  those  few  days  of  fulfilment,  of 
the  diviner  other  life  which  with  all  the  years  between  them 
they  had  failed  to  grasp. 

It  was  the  most  generous,  the  most  genuine,  the  most 
humiliating  moment  of  Milly's  life.  Yes,  she  was  glad  that 
in  all  the  drab  reality  of  their  life,  —  in  spite  of  the  bills, 
the  worry,  the  defeat,  —  he  had  had  his  great  moments  of 
art  and  love.  They  were  not  stolen  from  her :  such  moments 
cannot  be  stolen  from  anybody.  She  wished  that  he  might 
only  know  how  freely  she  was  glad,  —  not  forgave  him, 
because  forgiveness  had  nothing  to  do  with  it.  She  under- 
stood, at  last,  and  was  glad.  If  he  should  come  back  to  life 
now  by  some  miracle,  she  would  have  the  courage  after  this 
self-revelation  to  leave  him,  to  send  him  back,  if  not  to 
her, — at  least  to  his  great  work.  Only  that,  too,  might  now 
be  too  late  —  alas  ! 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  285 

With  a  quiet  dignity  that  was  new,  Milly  opened  the  other 
letter.  It  was  dated  only  a  few  weeks  before  from  some 
small  place  in  Russia.  Madame  Saratoff  explained  briefly 
that  she  was  now  living  with  her  children  on  her  mother's 
estate  in  central  Russia,  and  she  described  the  life  there  in 
its  perfect  monotony,  like  the  flat  country,  with  its  half 
animal  people.  "I  live  like  one  of  those  eastern  people," 
she  wrote,  "  dreaming  of  what  has  been  in  my  life."  She 
had  heard  accidentally  of  the  American  from  some  one  who 
had  met  him  in  New  York.  He  was  no  longer  painting,  she 
understood,  but  engaged  in  other  work.  That  was  sad.  It 
was  a  mistake  always  not  to  do  that  which  one  could  do 
with  most  joy.  In  the  whirlpool  of  this  life  there  was  so  much 
waste  matter,  so  little  that  was  complete  and  perfect,  that  no 
one  with  power  had  the  right  not  to  exercise  it. 

She  sent  this  letter  with  the  picture  he  had  made  of  her. 
It  belonged  more  to  him  than  to  her  because  he  had  created 
it  —  the  man's  part  —  while  she  had  merely  offered  the 
accidental  cause,  —  the  woman's  share.  And  further  she 
wished  to  torture  him  always  with  this  evidence  of  what  once 
had  been  in  him ;  not  with  her  face,  —  that  doubtless  had 
already  faded  from  his  mind.  But  no  other  one  had  he  fixed 
eternally  by  his  art  as  he  had  hers.  Of  that  she  was  sure. 
"Farewell." 

It  was  cold ;  it  was  cruel.  And  it  must  have  burned  the 
artist  like  acid  on  his  wound.  The  letters  should  have  gone 
with  him  to  his  grave.  .  .  . 

With  a  sense  of  finality,  —  that  this  was  the  real  end,  the 
end  of  her  marriage,  —  Milly  did  up  the  letters  carefully  and 
folded  the  piece  of  old  silk  about  the  portrait.  They  must  be 


286  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

returned  to  the  Baroness  Saratoff.     And  now  for  the  first 
time  since  they  had  met  and  married,  everything  seemed 
clear  and  settled  between  her  and  her  husband.     She  was 
left  with  her  little  girl  "to  face  life,"  as  the  saying  is. 
And  Milly  bravely  turned  her  face  towards  life. 


VII 

BEING   A  WIDOW 

MANY  times  during  the  ensuing  months  Milly  had  occasion 
to  recall  the  remark  of  a  clever  woman  she  had  once  heard. 
"  There's  no  place  in  modern  society  for  the  widow."  She 
came  to  believe  that  the  Suttee  custom  was  a  frank  and  on 
the  whole  a  merciful  recognition  of  the  situation.  Every  one 
was  kind  to  her,  —  unexpectedly,  almost  embarrassingly 
kind,  as  is  the  way  with  humanity.  But  Milly  knew  well 
enough  that  no  one  can  live  for  any  considerable  period  on 
sympathy  and  the  kindness  of  friends.  The  provoking 
cause  for  any  emotion  must  be  renewed  constantly. 

It  would  have  been  much  easier,  of  course,  if  her  husband 
had  left  her  and  his  child  "  comfortably  off,"  or  even  with  a 
tiny  income.  Instead,  there  were  the  bills,  which  seemed  to 
shower  down  like  autumn  leaves  from  every  quarter.  The 
kindly  brother-in-law,  who  undertook  to  straighten  out 
affairs,  became  impatient,  then  severe  towards  the  end. 
What  had  they  done  with  their  money  ?  For  Bragdon  until 
the  last  weeks  had  been  earning  a  very  fair  income.  Nothing 
seemed  paid.  On  the  apartment  only  the  first  thousand 
dollars  had  been  paid,  and  all  the  rest  was  mortgage  and 
loan  from  him.  Even  the  housekeeping  bills  for  the  year 
before  had  not  been  fully  settled.  (It  seemed  that  one  had 
merely  to  live  with  a  false  appearance  of  prosperity  to  secure 

287 


288  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

easy  credit,  in  a  social  system  that  compels  only  the  very 
poor  to  pay  on  the  nail.) 

Milly  could  not  explain  the  condition  of  their  affairs.  She 
had  no  idea  they  were  "so  far  behind."  She  was  sure  that 
she  had  given  Jack  most  of  the  bills  and  supposed  that  he 
had  taken  care  of  them.  She  protested  that  she  had  always 
been  economical,  and  she  thought  she  had  been,  because  there 
were  so  many  more  things  she  wanted,  —  things  that  all  their 
friends  seemed  to  have.  When  confronted  by  the  figures 
showing  that  they  had  spent  seven,  nine,  eleven  thousand 
dollars  a  year,  —  and  yet  had  many  unpaid  bills,  —  she 
could  not  believe  them  and  stammered,  —  "I  know  I'm  not 
a  good  manager  —  not  really.  But  all  that !  You  must  be 
mistaken."  Then  the  business  man  showed  his  irritation. 
Figures  did  not  lie  :  he  wished  every  woman  could  be  taught 
that  axiom  at  her  mother's  knee.  .  .  . 

"We  lived  so  simply,"  Milly  protested.  "Just  two  maids 
most  of  the  time,  —  three  this  winter,  but,"  etc.  In  the 
end  the  brother-in-law  gathered  up  all  the  unsettled  bills 
and  promised  to  pay  them.  He  would  not  have  his  brother's 
name  tarnished.  And  he  arranged  for  an  advantageous  lease 
of  the  apartment  from  the  first  of  the  next  month,  so  that 
after  paying  charges  and  interest  there  would  be  a  little 
income  left  over  for  Milly.  Here  he  stopped  and  made 
it  clear  to  Milly  that  although  he  should  do  what  he  could  for 
his  brother's  child,  she  must  see  what  she  could  do  for  her- 
self, and  what  her  own  people  offered  her.  Big  Business  had 
been  disturbed  of  late.  He  was  obliged  to  cut  his  own 
expenses.  First  and  last  he  had  done  a  good  deal  for  Jack. 
His  wife  called  Milly  "extravagant"  —  Milly  had  never 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  289 

found  her  congenial.  In  the  end  Milly  felt  that  her  brother- 
in-law  was  "hard,"  and  she  resolved  that  neither  she  nor  her 
child  should  ever  trouble  him  again. 

She  had  already  written  her  father  of  her  bereavement,  and 
received  promptly  from  Horatio  a  long,  rambling  letter, 
full  of  warm  sympathy  and  consolation  of  the  religious  sort. 
"We  must  remember,  dear  daughter,  that  these  earthly 
losses  in  our  affections  are  laid  upon  us  for  our  spiritual  good," 
etc.  Milly  smiled  at  the  thoroughness  with  which  her  volatile 
father  had  absorbed  the  style  of  the  Reverend  Herman  Bowler 
of  the  Second  Presbyterian.  To  Milly's  surprise,  there  was 
not  a  word  of  practical  help,  beyond  a  vague  invitation,  — 
"I  hope  we  shall  see  you  some  day  in  our  simple  home  in 
Elm  Park.  Josephine,  I'm  sure,  will  welcome  you  and  my 
granddaughter. ' ' 

Milly  very  much  doubted  whether  the  hard-featured 
Josephine  would  welcome  her  husband's  widowed  daughter. 
In  fact  she  saw  the  fear  of  Josephine  in  her  father's  restrained 
letter.  She  contemplated  a  return  to  Chicago  as  a  last 
resort,  but  it  was  sad  to  feel  that  she  wasn't  wanted.  .  .  . 

At  this  point  Milly  began  to  reproach  her  husband  for 
failing  to  leave  her  and  his  child  with  resources.  "He 
ought  to  have  made  some  sort  of  provision  for  his  family  — 
every  man  should,"  she  said  to  herself.  There  was  manifest 
injustice  in  this  "man-made  world,"  where  a  good  wife  could 
be  left  penniless  with  a  child  to  care  for. 

Milly  always  thought  of  herself  as  "a  good  wife,"  by  which 

she  meant  specifically  that  she  had  been  a  chaste  and  faithful 

wife.     That  was  what  the  phrase  in  its  popular  use  meant, 

just  as  "a  good  woman"  meant  merely  "a  pure  woman." 

u 


290  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

If  any  one  had  questioned  Milly's  virtue  as  a  wife,  she  would 
have  felt  outraged.  If  any  one  had  said  that  she  was  a  bad 
wife,  or  at  least  an  indifferent  wife,  she  would  have  felt  in- 
sulted. A  girl  who  gave  herself  to  a  man,  lived  with  him  for 
eight  of  her  best  years,  bore  him  a  child  and  had  been  faithful 
to  him  in  body,  must  be  "  a  good  wife,"  and  as  such  deserved 
a  better  fate  of  society  than  to  be  left  penniless.  All  her 
friends  said  it  was  a  very  hard  situation. 

These  same  friends  were  endeavoring  to  do  their  best  for 
her,  pricked  by  sympathy  with  her  evident  need.  If  it  had 
not  been  for  a  cheque  for  two  thousand  dollars,  which  Clive 
Reinhard  sent  her,  "in  payment  for  your  husband's  work  on 
the  new  contract,"  Milly  would  soon  have  been  without  a 
dollar  in  her  purse.  She  took  Reinhard's  cheque  thankfully, 
without  suspecting  her  right  to  it.  Others  might  suspect. 
For  there  was  no  contract,  no  illustrations  made  —  nothing 
but  the  novelist's  recognition  of  a  need.  The  cheque  was 
merely  one  of  the  ways  he  took  of  squaring  himself  with  his 
world. 

When  Milly 's  women  friends  heard  of  it,  they  said  with 
one  voice,  —  "Thank  heaven!  If  Clive  Reinhard  would 
only  marry  Milly  —  he  ought  to  !" 

Which  merely  meant  that,  as  he  was  a  rich  bachelor  who  had 
amassed  money  by  exploiting  the  sentimental  side  of  their  sex, 
there  would  be  a  poetic  justice  in  his  chivalrously  stepping 
into  the  breach  and  looking  after  his  dead  friend's  helpless 
widow.  It  would  make  up  for  "the  others,"  they  said,  and 
were  enthusiastic  over  their  sentimental  plan. 

"  Milly  would  make  a  charming  hostess  in  that  big  country 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  291 

place  of  Olive's.  It  would  give  her  a  free  hand.  What  Milly 
has  always  wanted  is  a  free  hand  —  she  has  the  ability. 
And  Olive  is  getting  pudgy  and  set.  He  ought  to  marry  — 
he's  too  dreadfully  selfish  and  self-centred,"  etc. 

Mrs.  Montgomery  Billman  took  the  affair  specially  in 
charge.  Of  course  a  decent  time  must  elapse  after  poor 
Jack's  death,  but  meanwhile  there  was  no  harm  in  bringing 
the  two  together.  The  masterful  wife  of  the  Responsible 
Editor  conceived  the  scheme  of  having  a  private  exhibition 
and  sale  of  Bragdon's  work,  and  that  took  many  interviews 
and  much  discussion  on  Sunday  evenings  when  the  hostess 
tactfully  left  the  two  to  themselves  before  the  fire,  while  she 
retired  "to  finish  my  letters."  When  she  returned,  however, 
she  found  them  dry-eyed  and  silent  or  chatting  about  some 
irrelevant  commonplace.  The  private  exhibition  came  off 
during  the  winter  in  the  "Bunker's  Barn,"  as  they  called  the 
big  Riverside  Drive  house.  A  good  many  cards  were 
scattered  about  in  literary  and  artistic  and  moneyed  circles ; 
tea  was  poured  by  the  ladies  interested ;  Milly  appeared  in 
her  widow's  black,  young  and  charming.  A  number  of 
people  came  and  a  few  bought.  Mrs.  Billman  contented 
herself  with  the  sketch  of  a  magazine  cover  representing  a 
handsome  woman  and  a  young  boy,  which  was  said  to 
resemble  herself  and  her  son.  On  the  whole  the  sale  would 
have  been  a  dreary  failure  if  it  had  not  been  for  Bunker's 
liberal  purchases  and  Reinhard's  taking  all  that  was  unsold 
"to  dispose  of  privately  among  Jack's  friends." 

The  hard  truth  was  that  Jack  Bragdon  had  not  shaken  the 
New  York  firmament,  certainly  had  not  knocked  a  gilt 
star  from  its  zenith.  At  thirty-two  he  was  just  a 


292  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

promising  failure,  one  of  the  grist  that  the  large  city  eats 
annually.  And  his  friends  were  not  powerful  enough  to 
make  up  for  his  lack  of  reclame.  "He  had  a  gift  —  slight 
though.  Nothing  much  done  —  charming  fellow  —  died  just 
as  he  was  starting,  poor  chap  !"  so  the  words  went.  If  the 
portrait  of  the  Russian  had  been  there,  the  tone  might  have 
been  less  patronizing ;  but  Milly  had  already  sent  this  off  on 
its  long  journey. 

The  practical  result  was  fifteen  hundred  dollars,  of  which 
Bunker  contributed  a  thousand,  and  various  convenient 
sums  that  dribbled  in  opportunely  from  the  novelist,  "when- 
ever he  was  able  to  make  a  sale."  (A  good  many  of  Jack 
Bragdon's  things  ultimately  will  come  under  the  hammer 
when  the  Reinhard  house  is  broken  up.) 

And  that  romance  which  Milly's  friends  had  staged  came 
to  nothing.  Reinhard  called  on  her  often,  was  very  kind  to 
her,  and  really  solicitous  for  her  welfare ;  he  also  was  charm- 
ing to  little  Virginia,  who  called  him  Uncle  Clive;  and  he 
had  both  at  his  country  place  for  long  visits,  —  abundantly 
chaperoned.  Nothing  could  have  been  "nicer"  than  the 
novelist's  attitude  to  his  friend's  widow,  all  the  women 
declared,  and  it  must  have  been  her  fault  —  or  else  that 
"other  affair"  had  gone  deeper  with  him  than  any  one 
supposed. 

Milly  herself  was  not  averse  to  entertaining  a  new  "hope." 
Her  marriage  seemed  so  utterly  dead  that  she  felt  free  to 
indulge  in  a  new  sentiment.  But  the  novelist  looked  at  her 
out  of  his  beady,  black  eyes, — indulgently,  kindly, — but 
through  and  through,  as  if  he  had  known  her  before  she  was 
born  and  knew  the  worth  of  every  heart-beat  in  her.  .  .  . 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  293 

Gradually  beneath  that  scalping  gaze  she  grew  to  dislike 
him,  almost  to  hate  him  for  his  indifference.  "He  must 
be  horrid  with  women,"  she  said  to  Hazel,  who  admitted 
that  "there  have  been  stories  —  a  man  living  by  himself, 
as  he  does  !" 
And  so  this  solution  came  to  naught. 

Milly  was  "up  against  it  again,"  as  she  said  to  herself. 
Her  small  bank-account  was  fast  melting  away.  (She  had 
her  own  sheaf  of  bills  that  she  had  not  cared  to  present  to 
her  brother-in-law,  and  she  found  that  a  penniless  widow 
has  poor  credit.)  Collectors  came  with  a  disagreeable 
promptness  and  followed  her  with  an  unerring  scent  through 
her  various  changes  of  residence.  It  became  known  among 
her  friends  that  "Milly  must  really  do  something." 

The  competent  wife  of  the  Responsible  Editor  thought  it 
ought  not  to  be  difficult  to  find  something  of  "  a  social  nature  " 
for  Milly  to  do.  "Your  gift  is  people,"  she  said  flatteringly. 
"  Let  me  think  it  over  for  a  day  or  two,  and  I'm  sure  the  right 
idea  will  come  to  me." 

She  promptly  turned  the  problem  over  to  Mrs.  Bunker, 
with  whom  she  still  maintained  amicable  relations.  That 
lady  in  due  time  wrote  Milly  a  note  and  asked  her  to  call 
the  next  morning.  Milly  went  with  humbled  pride,  but  with 
a  misgiving  due  to  her  previous  experiences  in  the  parasitic 
field  of  woman's  work.  When  after  many  preambles  and 
explanations,  punctuated  by  "like  that,  you  know,"  "all 
that  sort  of  thing,"  "we'll  have  to  see,"  etc.,  the  good  lady 
got  to  her  offer,  it  sounded  like  a  combination  of  lady-house- 
keeper and  secretary.  With  considerable  decision  Milly 


294  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

said  that  she  did  not  feel  qualified  for  the  work,  but  Mrs. 
Bunker  was  most  kind ;  she  would  consider  her  offer  and  let 
her  know,  and  left.  She  had  decided  already.  The  memory 
of  her  work  for  Eleanor  Kemp,  —  the  humiliation  and  the 
triviality  of  this  form  of  disguised  charity,  —  had  convinced 
her,  and  Eleanor  Kemp  was  a  lady  and  a  friend  and  a  com- 
petent person,  all  of  which  Mrs.  Howard  Bunker  was  not. 
"I'd  scrub  floors  first,"  Milly  said  stoutly,  and  straightway 
despatched  a  ladylike  refusal  of  the  proffered  job. 

("I  thought  you  said  she  was  in  great  need/'  Mrs.  Bunker 
telephoned  Mrs.  Billman  in  an  injured  tone  of  voice.  "She 
is  !"  "Well,  you  wouldn't  think  so,"  the  Bunkeress  flashed 
back.  "It's  so  hard  to  help  that  sort.  You  know,  the  kind 
that  have  been  ladies  !"  "I  know,"  the  Editress  rejoined, 
without  the  glimmer  of  a  smile.) 

The  only  one  of  all  Milly 's  friends  beside  the  novelist  who 
came  promptly  to  the  rescue  at  this  crisis  was  Marion  Red- 
don,  —  the  one  Milly  had  seen  least  of  since  she  had  been 
thoroughly  launched  in  New  York.  Marion  with  her  puri- 
tan directness  went  to  the  point  at  once. 

"What  you  want  is  a  place  to  stay  in  while  you  look  around. 
You  and  Virginia  come  to  us.  The  hang-out,  as  Sam  calls 
it,  isn't  large,  but  there's  always  room  somehow." 

Milly  demurred  at  first,  but  later  when  Marion  Reddon  was 
obliged  to  depart  hurriedly  for  the  south  because  one  of  the 
children  was  threatened  with  tuberculosis,  she  gratefully 
accepted  the  offer  of  the  Reddons'  apartment  during  their 
absence.  She  moved  from  the  boarding-house  where  she 
had  been  staying  between  visits  to  the  top  floor  of  the 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  295 

flimsy  building  behind  Grant's  Tomb  in  which  the  Reddons 
had  perched  themselves  latterly.  Virginia  was  obliged 
to  leave  her  school  where  "the  very  nicest  children  all  went," 
which  was  a  keen  regret  to  Milly,  for  she  had  already 
formed  ambitions  for  her  daughter.  The  contrast  of  her  own 
pretty  apartment  with  the  shabby,  worn  rooms  of  the 
Reddon  flat  brought  home  to  her,  as  nothing  else  had,  her  pre- 
carious situation.  And  she  set  herself  vigorously  to  meet  it. 


VIII 

THE  WOMAN'S  WORLD 

MILLY'S  most  intimate  friend  was  Hazel  Fredericks. 
That  restless,  keen  young  woman,  after  experimenting  vari- 
ously in  settlement  work,  hygiene  for  the  poor,  and  immigra- 
tion, had  concentrated  her  interests  on  the  woman  movement 
then  coming  more  and  more  into  notice.  The  agitation  for 
the  suffrage,  it  seemed  to  her,  was  the  effective  expression  of 
all  advanced,  radical  ideas  for  which  she  had  always  worked. 
Her  activity  in  the  movement  had  brought  her  into  close 
relations  with  some  of  the  local  leaders,  among  whom  were  a 
few  women  socially  prominent,  as  everybody  knows.  (In 
this  way  she  had  eclipsed  her  old  rival,  Mrs.  Billman,  who 
had  kept  to  Art  and  Society.)  Hazel  was  on  intimate  terms 
with  a  very  rich  young  married  woman,  who  lived  apart 
from  her  husband,  "for  the  very  best  of  reasons,  my  dear," 
and  who  spoke  in  private  houses  on  the  Cause. 

In  those  happier  days  when  Milly  still  had  her  own  little 
place  in  the  world,  she  had  rather  made  fun  of  Hazel's  views 
and  imputed  them  to  social  ambition.  "  She  wants  to  be  talked 
about,"  she  said.  But  since  the  experience  of  widowhood, 
Milly  was  changing  her  mind  and  listened  much  more  atten- 
tively to  all  that  Hazel  had  to  say  about  "the  woman  move- 
ment,"—  the  "endowment  of  motherhood,"  the  "necessity 
for  the  vote,"  —  and  read  "What  Forty  Thousand  Women 

296 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  297 

Want,"  "Love  and  Marriage,"  and  other  handbooks  of  the 
Cause. 

One  of  the  theories  with  which  Milly  most  heartily  agreed 
was  that  the  labor  of  women  in  the  home  should  be  paid  just 
as  the  labor  of  men.  Milly  felt  that  she  had  a  valid  claim 
for  a  number  of  years'  wages  still  due  her.  This  and  other 
subjects  she  talked  over  with  Hazel  and  became  fired  with 
enthusiasm  for  the  Cause.  Now,  in  her  need  of  work,  she 
asked,  — 

"Why  shouldn't  I  do  something  for  the  movement?" 
"I've  been  thinking  of  that,"  Hazel  replied,  with  a  shade  of 
hesitation  in  her  voice. 

"You  said  there  were  paid  secretaries  and  organizers." 
"Yes  —  there  are  some,  and  we  need  more." 
She  did  not  explain  that  there  were  hundreds  of  eager 
young  women,  college  graduates  and  social  workers,  younger 
and  much  better  informed  and  more  modern  than  Milly,  — 
in  a  word,  trained  women.  She  did  not  wish  to  discourage 
Milly,  and  believed  she  had  enough  influence  with  Mrs. 
Laverne  (the  pretty  married  worker)  and  with  Mrs.  Exeter, 
the  social  leader  most  prominently  identified  with  the 
Cause,  to  work  Milly  into  some  paid  place.  So  she  said 
reflectively,  — 

"There's  to  be  a  most  important  meeting  of  the  leaders  in 
the  movement  at  Mrs.  Exeter's,  and  I'll  see  what  I  can  do." 

With  a  laughing  "Votes  for  Women"  and  "For  a  Woman's 
World,"  the  two  friends  kissed  and  parted.  Shortly  after- 
wards a  card  came  to  Milly  from  a  very  grand  person  in  the 
social  world,  a  name  that  is  quite  familiar  wherever  news- 
papers penetrate.  The  card  invited  Mrs.  John  Bragdon  to 


298  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

take  part  in  a  meeting  of  those  interested  in  the  Woman 
Forward  Movement  on  the  evening  of  the  twentieth,  at  which 
addresses  would  be  made  by  certain  well-known  people. 
The  last  name  on  the  list  of  speakers  was  that  of  Mrs.  Stan- 
field  Fredericks.  Milly  was  much  excited.  She  was  eager  to 
go  to  the  meeting,  if  for  no  better  reason  than  from  a  natural 
curiosity  to  see  the  famous  house,  so  often  the  theme  of 
newspaper  hyperbole.  Also  she  was  anxious  to  hear  Hazel 
talk.  But  she  doubted  the  propriety  of  her  going  anywhere 
so  early  in  her  widowhood.  While  she  was  debating  this 
point  with  herself  the  telephone  rang  and  Hazel  Fredericks 
asked  if  she  had  received  the  card. 

" You're  going,  of  course?" 

There  followed  a  long  feminine  discussion  over  the  pro- 
priety of  accepting,  the  dress  to  be  worn,  etc.  Hazel 
insisted  that  this  occasion  was  not  really  social,  but  business, 
and  steadily  bore  down  Milly's  scruples.  "There'll  be  a 
great  crush.  It  won't  make  any  difference  what  you  wear  — 
nobody'll  know !" 

Milly  went.  She  had  to  bribe  the  raw  Swedish  servant  to 
remain  in  that  evening  with  little  Virginia,  and  she  went  to 
the  expense  of  a  cab  in  order  not  to  arrive  at  the  grand  house 
in  a  sloppy  and  tousled  condition.  It  was  in  many  respects  a 
thrilling  experience.  Once  inside  the  glassed  vestibule  on  the 
marble  steps,  Milly  felt  that  she  would  not  have  missed  it  for 
a  great  deal.  In  the  first  place  she  enjoyed  seeing  the  solemn 
liveried  men  servants,  one  of  whom  proffered  pamphlet 
literature  of  the  suffrage  cause  on  a  large  silver  tray.  (The 
little  books  were  sold  at  a  good  price,  and  Milly  dropped 
another  dollar  or  two  in  acquiring  stuff  that  she  could  have 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  299 

had  for  nothing  from  Hazel  Fredericks,  whose  apartment 
ran  over  with  this  "literature.") 

Having  supplied  herself  with  the  ammunition  of  the  Cause, 
she  followed  the  throng  into  the  celebrated  ball-room  hung 
with  beautiful  old  tapestries  and  with  a  ceiling  stolen  bodily 
from  a  French  chateau.  For  a  time  the  richness  and  the 
gayety  of  the  scene  sufficiently  occupied  Milly's  atten- 
tion. After  the  sombre  experiences  through  which  she  had 
been  and  her  present  drab  environment,  it  all  seemed  like 
fairyland.  She  tried  to  guess  who  the  important-looking 
people  were.  A  few  were  already  known  to  her  by  sight,  and 
others  she  recognized  from  their  newspaper  portraits.  There 
was  a  majority  of  elegantly  dressed  women,  and  a  minority  of 
amused  or  bored-looking  men. 

At  last  the  gathering  was  hushed  by  the  voice  of  the  hostess, 
—  a  plump  and  plethoric  person,  who  said  wheezily  that  in 
assembling  here  to-night  there  were  two  objects  in  view: 
first,  to  hear  cheering  words  of  wisdom  from  the  leaders  of  the 
Cause,  and  secondly,  to  show  the  world  that  the  cultivated 
and  leisure  classes  were  for  the  Emancipation  of  Woman. 
It  was  a  democratic  movement,  she  observed,  and  the  toiling 
sisters  most  in  need  of  the  vote  were  not  with  them  to-night. 
But  all  effective  revolts,  she  asserted,  started  from  above, 
among  the  aristocrats.  They  must  rouse  the  womanhood  of 
the  nation,  the  common  womanhood  that  now  slumbered  in 
ignorant  content,  to  a  sense  of  their  wrongs,  their  slavery. 
She  murmured  noblesse  oblige  and  sat  down.  Thereat  a 
little  bespectacled  lady  bobbed  up  at  her  side  arid  began 
reading  a  poem  in  a  low,  intense  voice.  There  were  inter- 
minable verses.  The  well-dressed,  well-dined  men  and 


300  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

women  in  the  audience  began  to  show  signs  of  restless- 
ness and  boredom,  although  they  kept  quiet  in  a  well-bred 
way.  One  lone  man  with  a  lean,  humorous  face,  who  was 
jammed  into  the  corner  beside  Milly,  looked  at  her  with  a 
twinkle  in  his  eye.  She  could  not  help  smiling  back,  but  im- 
mediately recomposed  her  face  to  seriousness. 

The  verses  ended  after  a  time,  as  all  things  must  end, 
and  the  speeches  followed,  —  the  first  by  a  very  earnest, 
dignified  woman,  —  a  noted  worker  among  the  poor,  —  who 
argued  practically  that  this  man-governed  world  was  a  failure, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  majority,  the  unprotected 
workers,  and  therefore  women  should  be  permitted  to  do 
what  they  could  to  better  things.  There  was  a  slight  mur- 
mur of  appreciation  —  rather  for  herself  than  for  her  argu- 
ment —  when  she  sat  down.  She  was  followed  by  a  pompous 
little  man,  who  made  a  legal  speech  with  lumbering  attempts 
at  humor.  Milly  was  much  impressed  by  the  long  list  of 
legal  disabilities  he  cited  which  women  suffered  in  this  "  man- 
made  world,"  and  which  she  had  not  hitherto  suspected. 
The  man  by  her  side  was  yawning,  and  Milly  felt  like  re- 
proving him. 

After  the  pompous  judge  came  the  star  of  the  performance, 
—  the  pretty  little  woman  who  was  separated  from  her  hus- 
band. She  was  very  becomingly  dressed,  much  excited 
apparently,  and  swayed  to  and  fro  as  she  talked.  Sometimes 
she  closed  her  eye  in  a  frenetic  vision  of  women's  wrongs, 
then  suddenly  opened  them  wide  upon  her  audience  with 
flashing  indignation,  as  old-fashioned  actresses  once  did. 
After  the  dull  pleas  of  the  preceding  speakers,  based  on  general 
principles  and  equity,  this  was  an  impassioned  invective 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  301 

against  the  animal  man.  One  felt  that  hers  was  a  personal 
experience.  The  low,  degraded  nature  of  the  sex  that  had, 
by  physical  force,  usurped  the  rule  of  the  universe  was  dra- 
matically exposed.  Milly  glowed  with  sympathy  while  she 
listened,  though  she  could  not  explain  why,  as  her  experience 
with  men  had  not  been  with  lechers,  drunkards,  wife-beaters. 
The  men  she  had  known  had  been  on  the  whole  a  fairly  clean, 
hard-working,  kindly  lot,  yet  she  knew  instinctively,  as  she 
often  said,  that  "All  men  are  alike,"  by  which  she  meant  ty- 
rannical and  corrupt  in  regard  to  women.  .  .  .  The  audience 
listened  closely  to  the  speaker.  No  doubt  their  interest  was 
increased  by  the  gossip  every  one  knew,  —  how  her  husband 
had  struck  her  at  a  restaurant,  how  he  had  dragged  her  by 
the  hair,  cut  her  with  a  bottle  from  her  own  dressing-table,  etc. 
Milly  noticed  that  Hazel  Fredericks  and  the  settlement 
worker  kept  their  heads  lowered  disapprovingly.  The  man 
next  her  twisted  his  quizzical  face  into  a  smile,  and  turning 
to  Milly  as  the  speaker  stopped,  amid  a  burst  of  applause, 
said  frankly  and  simply  as  to  an  old  friend,  — 

"  Whew  —  what  rot!" 

Milly  could  not  help  smiling  back  at  the  engaging  stranger, 
but  she  protested  stoutly,  — 

" I  don't  think  so!" 

Before  they  could  extend  their  remarks,  the  next  speaker, 
a  rich  widow  well-known  for  her  large  charities,  was  address- 
ing the  audience  in  low,  earnest  tones.  Her  theme  was  taken 
from  the  poet's  verses :  she  pleaded  for  the  full  emancipation 
of  Woman  as  man's  equal  comrade  in  the  advance  of  the  race. 
It  was  a  vague,  poetic  rhapsody,  disconnected  in  thought, 
and  made  slight  impression  on  Milly.  The  last  speaker  was 


302  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Hazel  Fredericks.  Her  subject  was  the  intellectual  equality 
of  women  with  men  and  their  right  to  do  their  own  thinking. 
Milly  recognized  many  of  the  pat  phrases  and  all  the  ideas 
which  were  current  in  the  magazine  set  where  she  had  lived,  — 
woman's  self-expression  and  self-development,  etc.  It  was 
the  most  carefully  prepared  of  all  the  addresses  and  very  well 
delivered,  and  it  made  an  excellent  impression,  though  it 
contained  nothing  original  either  in  thought  or  in  expres- 
sion. Like  Milly's  famous  graduation  essay  on  Plato  it  was 
a  masterpiece  of  skilful  quotation,  but  in  this  case  the  theft 
was  less  obvious  and  the  subject  was  certainly  fresher. 

There  was  the  usual  movement  of  relieved  humanity  after 
it  has  been  talked  to  for  two  hours,  and  then  the  hostess  rose 
again,  and  in  her  languid  drawl  announced  that  all  who  felt 
interested  in  the  Cause  were  requested  to  sign  the  "Roster" 
and  give  their  addresses,  so  that  they  might  be  kept  in  touch 
with  the  movement.  The  "Roster"  was  a  very  handsome 
gilt-edged,  blue  levatine-bound  book,  which  was  carried 
about  in  the  crowded  room  by  a  footman,  another  man 
carrying  a  gold  inkstand  and  pen. 

The  stranger  beside  Milly  murmured  in  her  ear,  — 

"So  Society  has  taken  up  the  Cause  !" 

"I'm  afraid,"  Milly  replied  with  an  arch  smile,  "you  don't 
take  us  quite  seriously." 

"Don't  think  it  for  one  moment!"  he  retorted.  "I 
don't  believe  I  have  ever  taken  anything  so  seriously  in  all 
my  life  as  Women." 

"In  what  way?" 

"In  every  way." 

He  resumed  in  a  moment,  more  seriously,  — 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  303 

"Frankly,  I  don't  believe  much  is  accomplished  for  your 
Cause  by  this  sort  of  thing !" 

His  gesture  included  comprehensively  the  gorgeous  room, 
the  gorgeous  assembly  of  socially  elect,  the  speakers,  and  the 
liveried  servants  who  were  now  approaching  their  corner 
with  the  "Roster." 

"But  you  have  to  start  things  somehow,"  Milly  rejoined, 
remembering  Hazel's  arguments.  "Social  prestige  counts 
in  everything." 

"Is  that  what  you  need  —  social  prestige?  ...  I  don't 
believe  one  of  those  women  who  talked,  including  the  poet, 
ever  earned  a  dollar  in  her  life  I"  and  with  a  glance  about  the 
room  he  added,  "nor  any  woman  in  this  room." 

"Oh,  yes  —  I  have  myself  1"  Milly  replied  promptly  and 
proudly. 

The  man  looked  at  her  sharply. 

"And  that  doesn't  make  any  difference,"  she  continued 
with  a  superior  air;  "you  men  are  always  trying  to  bring 
things  down  to  dollars  and  cents." 

"You'll  admit  it's  a  tangible  basis  of  discussion." 

"I've  no  doubt  if  they  only  had  their  rights  many  of  them 
ought  to  be  paid  a  great  deal  for  what  they've  done  for  you 
men." 

"I  mean  that  not  one  has  ever  done  anything  really  pro- 
ductive in  her  life  —  has  added  anything  to  the  world's  supply 
of  necessities,"  he  continued  with  masculine  arrogance. 

"Oh?"  Milly  protested. 

"Not  even  children  !"  he  added  triumphantly,  and  glanced 
at  the  names  on  his  programme.  "I  don't  believe  they 
could  produce  a  child  among  'em." 


304  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Milly  knew  that  the  women  speakers  of  the  evening 
happened  all  to  be  childless  women.  One  of  them  was  not 
married,  another  was  a  widow,  a  third  separated  from  her 
husband,  and  of  the  others  at  least  one  —  Hazel  —  had  delib- 
erately evaded  maternity. 

"That  may  not  be  their  fault !"  Milly  retorted  with  mean- 
ing. 

"True,"  the  man  admitted.  "But  I'd  like  to  hear  some- 
thing on  the  question  from  Mothers." 

"Having  children  isn't  the  only  thing  women  are  good 
for,"  Milly  suggested. 

"It's  one  mighty  fine  thing,  though  !" 

(Milly  could  never  understand  why  men,  as  a  rule,  were  so 
enthusiastic  over  women  who  had  children.) 

"Aren't  we  getting  away  from  the  subject  ?"  she  suggested. 

Their  talk  was  interrupted  by  the  presence  of  the  solemn 
footman  with  the  book  of  irreproachable  names.  To  Milly's 
surprise  her  unknown  companion  grasped  the  pen  and 
scrawled  beneath  her  signature  a  name  that  looked  like  "A. 
Vanniman,"  with  the  address  of  a  well-known  club.  So  he 
was  a  single  man  ! 

"How  could  you  do  that?"  Milly  demanded  accusingly. 

"Why  not?  I  want  women  to  vote,  just  as  soon  and  as 
often  as  they  like.  Then  they'll  know  how  little  there  is  in 
the  vote  and  maybe  get  down  to  brass  tacks." 

"You  don't  really  believe  in  women,"  Milly  remarked 
coquettishly. 

"  I  don't  believe  in  this  sort  of  flummery,  no.  ...  I  want 
to  hear  from  the  waitresses,  the  clerks,  the  factory  girls  — 
the  seven  or  eight  millions  of  women  who  are  up  against  it 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  305 

every  day  of  their  lives  to  earn  a  living.  I  want  to  hear 
what  they  have  to  say  about  suffrage  and  the  rights  of  women 
—  what  they  want  ?  Did  you  ever  ask  them  ?" 

"No-o,"  Milly  admitted,  and  then  recalled  another  of 
Hazel's  arguments.  "All  those  women  need  the  vote,  of 
course,  to  make  laws  to  help  them  earn  their  living.  But 
they  haven't  the  time  to  agitate  and  organize.  They  are 
not  educated  —  not  expressive." 

"Not  expressive  !"  the  man  exclaimed.  "I  wish  you  and 
all  these  good  women  here  could  listen  to  my  stenographer 
for  ten  minutes  on  what  women  need.  She  knows  the 
game !" 

Milly  did  not  approve  of  her  companion's  sentiments :  he 
clearly  belonged  to  the  large  class  of  prejudiced  males  whose 
indifference  the  Cause  had  to  combat.  But  he  had  an  inter- 
esting face  and  was  altogether  an  attractive  specimen  of  his 
species.  She  wondered  who  he  might  be.  It  seemed  to  her 
that  "Vanniman"  had  a  familiar  sound,  and  she  believed  he 
was  some  man  of  importance  in  the  city. 

There  was  a  general  drift  towards  the  supper  room.  But 
Milly  hesitated.  She  had  promised  Hazel  to  join  her  after 
the  speaking  and  be  introduced  to  some  of  the  leaders,  — 
especially  to  the  pretty  young  woman  who  had  denounced 
Man,  —  in  the  hope  that  a  paid  position  could  be  found  for 
her.  At  first  she  could  not  find  her  friend,  and  then  she  saw 
Hazel  surrounded  by  a  number  of  important-looking  men 
and  women,  talking  very  earnestly  with  them,  and  a  sudden 
timidity  came  over  her  in  the  midst  of  this  distinguished 
gathering. 

"We'd  better  get  something  to  eat,"  her  unknown  ac- 
x 


306  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

quaintance  suggested.  He  had  waited  for  her,  and  she  felt 
relieved  to  have  some  one  to  speak  to.  "It  makes  one  fear- 
fully hungry  to  listen  to-  a  lot  of  talk,  don't  you  think  ?  " 

So  Milly  went  out  to  supper  with  the  agreeable  stranger. 

"No,"  he  resumed,  after  presenting  her  with  a  comforting 
beaker  of  champagne,  "  I've  every  sympathy  with  the  woman 
with  a  job  or  with  the  woman  who  wants  a  job.  All  this 
silly  talk  about  the  sexes  makes  me  tired.  Man  or  woman, 
the  job's  the  thing." 

"Yes  !"  Milly  assented  with  heartfelt  emphasis. 

"What  every  one  needs  is  something  to  do,  and  women 
must  be  trained  like  men  for  their  jobs." 

He  began  to  talk  more  seriously  and  entertainingly  on  the 
economic  changes  in  modern  society  that  had  produced  the 
present  state  of  unrest  and  readjustment.  He  sketched  quite 
feelingly  what  he  called  the  old-fashioned  woman,  with  her 
heavy  duties  and  responsibilities  in  the  pioneer  days.  "The 
real  pillar  of  Society  —  and  often  a  domestic  slave,  God 
bless  her!"  he  said.  "But  her  granddaughter  has  become 
either  a  parasite,  or  another  kind  of  slave,  —  an  industrial 
slave.  And  the  vote  [isn't  going  to  help  her  in  either 
case.'1 

Milly  wondered  in  which  class  she  fell.  She  didn't  like 
the  word  "parasite,"  —  it  sounded  like  a  disease, — and 
yet  she  was  afraid  that  was  what  she  was. 

"I  think  that  I  must  be  going,"  Milly  said  at  last.  She 
noticed  that  the  rooms  were  fast  emptying  after  the  food  had 
been  devoured,  and  she  could  see  Hazel  nowhere.  She  would 
call  her  up  in  the  morning  and  congratulate  her  on  her 
speech.  And  so  with  a  nod  to  the  stranger  she  went  for  her 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  307 

wraps.  But  she  found  him  again  in  the  vestibule,  and  won- 
dered if  he  had  waited  for  her  to  come  down.  ;'v' 

" What's  the  name?"  he  asked,  as  the  servant  came  for- 
ward to  call  her  carriage. 

"I  haven't  any  cab,"  Milly  replied  bravely.  It  was  her 
custom  these  days  Cinderella-like  to  dispense  with  a  return 
cab. 

"But  it's  raining,"  the  man  protested.  "You  must  let 
me  set  you  down  at  your  home." 

A  private  hansom  had  drawn  up  to  the  curb  before  the 
awning.  "Where ? "  he  insisted. 

"It's  an  awful  way  out,"  Milly  faltered ;  "just  take  me  to 
the  nearest  subway  station." 

Embarrassed  by  the  gaze  of  the  servant  and  by  the 
waiting  people  behind,  she  got  into  the  hansom.  The 
man  gave  some  sort  of  order  to  his  driver  and  got  in  beside 
her.  They  trotted  briskly  around  the  corner  on  to  the 
Avenue,  and  as  it  was  misting  heavily  the  driver  let  down  the 
glass  shield.  It  seemed  cozy  and  pleasant  to  jog  home  from 
a  party  in  a  private  cab,  with  an  agreeable  man  by  one's 
side.  Quite  like  old  times,  Milly  thought ! 

"You'd  better  let  me  take  you  all  the  way.  Where  shall 
I  say  ?"  and  he  raised  the  top  with  his  stick.  For  a  moment 
Milly  was  about  to  yield.  She  liked  the  sense  of  having  a 
masterful  man  near  her,  overbearing  her  doubts,  but  she 
still  protested,  — 

"No,  no  —  it's  too  far.  Just  put  me  down  at  Columbus 
Circle." 

The  man  hesitated,  looked  at  Milly  curiously,  then  gave 
the  driver  the  direction.  Milly  wondered  why  he  had  not 


308  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

insisted  as  she  had  expected  he  would  or  did  not  again  sug- 
gest driving  her  out,  when  they  had  reached  the  subway 
station.  There  was  a  time  when  men  would  not  have  taken 
no  for  an  answer.  But  he  didn't  —  nor  even  ask  her  name. 
Instead  he  courteously  helped  her  to  alight  and  raising  his 
hat  drove  off. 

She  was  depressed  going  uptown  in  the  crowded,  smelly, 
shrieking  train.  The  meeting  had  not  been  as  thrilling  as 
she  had  anticipated.  Hazel  would  probably  scold  her  to- 
morrow for  not  coming  forward  and  meeting  the  leaders. 
But  she  felt  that  the  Woman  Forward  movement  had  little 
to  offer  her  in  her  perplexities.  Hers  was  part  of  that  eco- 
nomic maladjustment  that  the  good-looking  stranger  had 
talked  about,  and  even  with  the  suffrage  it  would  take  genera- 
tions to  do  anything  for  women  like  her. 

What  really  depressed  her  most  was  the  fact  that  her  un- 
known acquaintance  had  not  considered  it  worth  while  to 
find  out  her  name  and  pave  the  way  for  further  relations. 
She  realized  cynically  that  for  the  present  at  any  rate  the 
woman  question  came  down  to  just  this  :  men  could  do  many 
pleasant  and  useful  things  for  women  when  they  were  so 
inclined.  And  a  woman  failed  when  she  could  not  interest 
a  man  sufficiently  to  move  him  to  make  the  advance.  Of 
course  Milly  knew  that  the  " modern  woman"  would  fiercely 
desire  to  be  independent  of  all  such  male  patronage.  But 
as  Milly  climbed  wearily  the  long  flight  of  stairs  to  her 
apartment,  feeling  tired  and  forlorn  and  very  much  alone  in 
the  world,  she  knew  that  in  the  bottom  of  her  heart  she  had 
no  wish  to  be  " modern."  And  she  was  even  sceptical  as  to 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  309 

how  sincerely  the  other  women,  like  Hazel  Fredericks,  de- 
sired that  " complete  independence  of  the  male"  they  chat- 
tered so  much  about. 

When  Milly  turned  on  the  electric  light  in  the  little  apart- 
ment, it  was  forebodingly  still.  She  glanced  at  once  into 
the  room  where  Virginia  slept  and  found  it  empty,  with  the 
bedclothes  tumbled  in  a  heap.  She  rushed  to  the  maid's 
room.  That  too  was  empty  and  the  rear  door  was  locked 
on  the  outside.  For  a  moment  Milly 's  heart  ceased  beating, 
then  with  a  shriek,  —  "Virgie,  Virgie  —  where  are  you!" 
she  ran  into  the  front  hall  and  plunged,  still  shrieking,  down 
the  stairs. 

A  door  opened  on  the  floor  below,  and  the  figure  of  a  large 
woman  in  a  rose-pink  negligee  confronted  Milly. 

"Lookin'  for  yer  little  girl?"  the  stranger  asked  in  a  loud, 
friendly  voice.  "Well,  she's  all  right  —  just  come  in  here  !" 

She  held  open  the  door  and  pointed  to  the  front  room, 
where  under  a  crocheted  shawl  little  Virginia  was  curled  up 
asleep  on  the  divan.  Milly  fell  beside  her  with  an  hysteri- 
cal sob.  The  child,  partly  awakened,  put  out  her  thin  arms 
and  murmured  sleepily,  "The  strange  lady's  very  nice, 
but  she's  queer.  Take  me  home,  mama,  please." 

The  "strange  lady,"  who  was  looking  on  interestedly, 
explained,  — 

"I  heard  the  kid  runnin'  round  up  above  and  cryin'  —  oh, 
that  was  hours  ago  when  I  first  com'  home  —  and  as  she  kep 
it  up  cryin'  as  if  she  were  scared  and  callin',  I  went  up  there 
and  brought  her  down  to  stay  with  me  till  you  got  back.  .  .  . 
Guess  she  woke  up  and  was  lonesome  all  by  herself." 


310  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"That  brute  Hilda,"  Milly  gasped,  "must  have  gone  off 
and  left  her." 

"They're  all  like  that, — them  Swedes,"  the  woman  of 
the  rose-pink  negligee  agreed.  "Got  no  more  heart  than  a 
brick." 

She  spoke  as  from  a  vast  experience  with  the  race. 

"The  little  girl  has  been  as  nice  as  pie,"  the  woman  re- 
plied to  Milly's  stammered  thanks.  "We've  been  real 
friendly.  Good-by,  girlie,  I'll  be  up  to-morrer  some  time 
and  tell  you  the  last  of  that  story.  .  .  .  Good-night !" 

Milly  gathered  her  precious  bundle  in  her  arms  and  with 
renewed  thanks  staggered  back  to  her  own  quarters. 

"She's  queer,  mama,  and  something  happened  to  her  arm 
and  leg,  long  ago,  but  she's  very  kind,"  the  small  Virginia 
explained  sleepily  as  her  mother  dropped  her  on  her  own  bed. 

By  "queer"  Virginia  merely  meant  that  her  good  Samari- 
tan was  not  of  the  class  she  had  been  accustomed  to,  and  did 
not  use  language  precisely  as  her  mother  and  her  mother's 
friends  used  it.  To  Virginia  the  janitor  of  the  building  was 
"queer, "  and  almost  all  of  the  many  thousands  of  her  fellow- 
beings  whom  she  saw  daily  on  the  streets  of  the  great  city. 

So  Milly  thought  no  more  about  it. 


IX 


THE   NEW   WOMAN 

BUT  the  " queer"  woman  in  the  rose-pink  negligee  who 
befriended  Virginia  on  the  night  when  her  mother  had  gone 
to  the  meeting  of  the  Woman  Forward  Movement  in  the 
very  grand  house  and  "the  beast  of  a  Swede"  Hilda  had 
slipped  out  to  meet  her  lover  beside  Grant's  Tomb,  has  more 
to  do  with  Milly  and  the  woman  question  itself  than  the 
suffrage  meeting  and  all  the  talk  there.  Ernestine  Geyer, 
for  such  was  the  woman's  name,  came  into  Milly's  life 
rather  late,  but  she  will  have  much  to  do  with  it  hereafter 
and  deserves  a  chapter  to  herself  to  begin  with. 

Incredible  as  it  would  seem  to  Milly,  Ernestine's  origin 
was  not  widely  separated  from  that  of  Milly  Ridge.  She 
might  very  well  have  been  one  of  the  many  little  school- 
mates, not  exactly  "nice,"  who  sat  beside  Milly  on  the 
benches  of  the  St.  Louis  public  school.  Her  ancestry,  to  be 
sure,  was  more  mongrel  than  Milly's ;  it  would  defy  any  gene- 
alogist to  trace  it  beyond  father  and  mother  or  resolve  it 
properly  into  its  elements.  The  name  itself  indicated  that 
there  must  have  been  some  German  or  Dutch  blood  in  the 
line.  Neither  would  it  be  possible  now  to  explain  what 
exigencies  of  the  labor  market  compelled  Ernestine's  family 
to  migrate  from  St.  Louis  to  New  York. 

All  that  Ernestine  herself  knew  was  that  her  father  worked 
in  breweries,  and  that  she  with  her  five  brothers  and  sisters 

311 


312  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

lived  in  one  of  those  forbidding  brick  rookeries  on  the  lower 
west  side  of  New  York.  This  was  when  she  was  ten.  When 
she  reached  fourteen  —  the  legal  age  —  she  escaped  from 
the  routine  of  school  and  joyfully  went  to  work  hi  a  laundry. 
For  children  of  her  class  it  was  like  coming  of  age,  —  to 
become  wage-earners  with  the  accompanying  independence 
and  family  respect. 

The  laundry  where  she  found  her  first  job  was  a  small 
affair,  of  the  "domestic-hand  laundry"  type,  situated  in  a 
low  brick  building  that  had  once  served  as  a  gentleman's 
private  stable  on  one  of  the  cross  streets  near  Gramercy 
Park.  At  that  time  Ernestine  was  a  hearty,  vigorous  child, 
strong  for  her  age,  or  she  never  could  have  endured  the  long 
hours  of  hard  work  on  wet  floors  in  a  steaming  room  and  with 
heavy  bundles  to  lift  and  carry.  As  a  grown  woman  her 
squat  figure,  large  and  slightly  round-shouldered,  betrayed 
these  early  years  of  stooping  labor,  and  her  colorless  com- 
plexion, not  a  sickly  pallor  but  a  neutral  white  beneath  the 
thick  black  hair,  was  the  result  of  years  spent  in  a  dark,  misty 
atmosphere,  through  which  even  the  gas-lights  burned 
dimly.  In  those  early  days  when  Ernestine  scurried  across 
the  city  in  the  procession  of  working-girls,  mornings  at  seven 
forty-five  and  evenings  at  six,  she  was  very  much  like  all 
the  others,  —  a  not  wholly  unattractive  young  woman  with 
quick  eyes.  Perhaps  she  was  a  trifle  quieter,  less  emotional 
than  her  companions  at  the  laundry  —  more  reflective  in 
disposition  —  but  not  noticeably  more  intelligent  than  the 
many  thousands  in  her  class. 

And  if  it  had  not  been  for  an  accident,  which  at  the  time 
seemed  frightful  to  her,  Ernestine  Geyer  would  probably 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  313 

have  turned  out,  as  most  of  her  kind  turn  out,  either  have 
become  the  wife  of  a  workingman  with  a  brood  of  children  to 
feed  the  labor  hopper  or  gone  to  her  end  more  rapidly  on  the 
streets.  But  one  day,  owing  to  a  defect  in  the  machinery 
that  controlled  the  huge  cauldron  over  which  she  was  bend- 
ing, the  thing  tipped  and  scalded  her  with  a  flood  of  boiling 
water  on  her  right  arm  and  leg.  At  the  hospital  it  was 
thought  she  would  have  to  lose  the  arm;  but  she  was  too 
robustly  made  for  that.  A  frightful  red  scar  from  her  hip 
to  below  the  knee  and  a  withered  right  hand  and  forearm 
were  the  results.  They  took  her  back  at  the  laundry  when 
she  left  the  hospital  out  of  pity  and  a  sense  of  responsibility 
for  her  bad  luck,  and  gave  her  some  light  work  sorting  out 
clothes  and  checking  pieces,  which  she  could  do  after  a 
fashion  with  her  left  hand  and  the  withered  stump. 

Ernestine  quickly  realized  —  and  just  here  was  the  proof 
of  her  innate  superiority  to  the  majority  —  that  her  only 
chance  for  existence  was  to  make  herself  so  useful  in  the 
irregular  labor  she  could  perform  that  she  would  not  be  dis- 
charged at  the  first  opportunity.  And  she  worked  as  she 
had  never  before  dreamed  she  could  work !  She  counted, 
sorted,  marked,  checked  the  huge  piles  of  restaurant  and 
office  linen  that  the  laundry  took.  She  had  the  sense  to 
employ  a  younger  brother  to  assist  her  with  his  whole  hands. 
She  became,  in  a  word,  the  order,  the  system,  the  regulator 
of  the  small  establishment,  and  hence  indispensable  to  the 
overworked  proprietor.  Her  accident  by  depriving  her  of 
the  ordinary  amusements  of  her  fellows  also  made  her  more 
intelligent,  because  she  had  nothing  but  her  work  to  occupy 
her  mind.  The  laundry  became  the  one  thing  she  lived  for : 


314  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

it  had  her  every  thought  and  emotion.  She  knew  from  the 
first  that  no  man  would  ever  think  of  marrying  her  —  she 
saw  it  in  the  pitying  glances  that  the  girls  gave  her.  No 
man  would  endure  a  woman  with  a  withered  stump  of  a  right 
hand,  not  to  mention  the  ugly  scar  that  defaced  her  body. 
Thus  the  world  of  sex  shut  out  with  all  its  related  disturb- 
ances, she  became  by  the  process  of  intense  specialization  a 
most  efficient  worker. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  recount  all  the  steps  of  her  progress 
upward.  When  the  small  proprietor  of  the  "hand  laundry" 
acquired  another  property  farther  up  town  she  persuaded 
him  to  let  her  manage  the  old  business  under  his  direction. 
(He  was  a  widower  now  and  no  longer  young ;  he  would  have 
married  her,  perhaps.  But  she  knew  what  that  meant  —  a 
loss  of  salary  and  double  work;  and  she  would  have  none 
of  him  as  husband.)  She  was  twenty  now,  and  earning  more 
than  she  had  ever  expected  to  make,  —  eighteen  dollars  a 
week.  After  that  the  years  passed  quickly  until  she  was 
twenty-five  and  getting  thirty  dollars  a  week.  Her  family 
having  broken  up,  she  was  living  in  a  boarding-house  not  far 
from  the  laundry.  .  .  . 

Through  the  misty,  dirty  panes  of  the  window  in  the  rough 
office  on  the  upper  floor  of  the  old  stable  where  Ernestine 
now  had  her  desk,  she  could  look  across  the  narrow  street 
to  the  row  of  small  brick  houses  opposite.  These  houses 
had  suffered  various  vicissitudes  since  Ernestine  had  first 
come  to  work  in  the  laundry.  Then  they  had  been  shabby- 
genteel  boarding-houses  like  the  one  a  block  or  two  away 
where  she  herself  now  lived.  Gradually  the  character 
of  the  street  had  improved.  Some  young  couples,  hunting 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  315 

for  a  spot  in  all  this  crowded,  expensive  city  where  they 
might  make  their  modest  nests,  had  moved  into  the  old- 
fashioned  houses  and  renovated  them  according  to  modern 
ideas.  Number  232,  almost  directly  opposite  Ernestine's 
loft,  had  been  among  the  first  thus  to  renew  its  youth.  The 
old  iron  balconies  had  been  restored  and  little  green  shutters 
with  crescent-shaped  peep-holes  added,  and  also  flower-filled 
window-boxes. 

Ernestine  had  taken  a  special  interest  in  this  house  and 
often  speculated  about  the  life  going  on  within  its  sober 
brick  walls,  behind  the  fresh  muslin  curtains  of  the  upper 
windows.  At  first  there  was  just  a  man  and  his  wife  and 
a  small  child,  whose  young  mother  wheeled  it  out  each 
morning  in  a  basket  carriage,  for  the  one  maid  was  busy 
all  day  long.  Then  another  child  had  come  and  another. 
The  first  child  went  to  school  with  a  maid  —  there  were 
three  maids  hi  the  house  now.  Ernestine  watched  the 
orderly  development  of  this  family  with  all  the  interest  of 
a  nature  lover  observing  a  nest  of  robins.  At  first  when 
the  shutters  were  closed  in  the  early  hot  days  of  June  she 
was  afraid  lest  other  hands  might  open  them  in  the  autumn, 
but  after  a  time  she  knew  her  family  well  enough  to  under- 
stand that  they  were  not  the  kind  that  moves,  except 
for  death  or  other  cogent  cause.  She  inferred  that  they 
were  becoming  more  prosperous,  as  was  quite  proper.  There 
was  an  increasing  amount  of  coming  and  going  at  the  old- 
fashioned  door,  and  she  got  to  know  the  habitual  visitors 
apart  from  the  merely  casual  acquaintances.  In  time  she 
built  up  from  her  myriad  glances  across  the  street  a  substan- 
tial family  tree  of  uncles  and  aunts,  cousins  and  brothers. 


316  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

What  interested  her  most  were  the  occasional  glimpses  of 
the  front  rooms  she  had  when  the  maids  opened  wide  the 
windows  and  pushed  aside  the  curtains.  She  was  enabled 
thus  to  observe  three  layers  of  an  orderly,  inviting  domes- 
ticity :  on  the  first  floor  she  could  see  a  large,  soft  rug,  an  oil 
painting,  a  lovely  silk  hanging  that  shut  off  the  inner  room, 
and  a  corner  of  a  mahogany  case  with  some  foreign  bric-a- 
brac.  She  liked  best  the  floor  above,  where  the  family  mostly 
lived  when  they  were  by  themselves:  here  was  one  large 
recessed  room  where  the  crowded  book-shelves  went  to  the 
ceiling,  a  real  fire  burned  in  a  fireplace,  and  real  lamps  lighted 
a  large  table,  around  which  the  members  of  the  family  read 
or  worked  or  played.  Here  the  lady  of  the  house  —  a 
vigorous  little  body,  with  laughing  eyes  —  sat  and  sewed, 
had  tea  with  visitors,  read  to  her  children,  and  wrote  letters. 
Here  in  the  winter  twilight  before  the  day  at  the  laundry 
was  finished  the  man  of  the  house  entered  with  a  jerky  little 
masterful  step,  crossed  to  the  chair  where  his  wife  sat  reading, 
leaned  over,  kissed  her,  and  having  established  himself  with 
back  to  the  fire  delivered  himself,  so  Ernestine  judged,  of 
his  daily  budget  of  news.  How  she  would  like  to  hear  what 
he  had  to  say  ! 

It  was  all  a  little  pantomime  of  domestic  life,  —  a  varied, 
yet  orderly  pantomime,  and  it  had  continued  with  suitable 
variations  for  more  than  seven  years.  Ernestine  often 
thought  about  it,  not  so  much  during  the  day  when  her  mind 
was  occupied  with  business  wherever  her  eyes  might  be,  as 
at  night  when  she  returned  to  her  forlorn  boarding-house 
room.  That  commonplace  domestic  interior  of  number  232 
had  more  to  do  with  Ernestine  Geyer's  life  than  it  would 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  317 

be  easy  to  say.     It  was  her  dream,  her  ideal  of  life  as  it 
should  be  —  and  almost  never  was. 

Unconsciously  it  moved  this  solitary  woman  to  listen  fa- 
vorably to  the  advances  of  a  man  she  met  at  her  boarding 
place.  He  was  not  much  of  a  man  —  she  knew  that !  A 
feeble  body  of  a  man,  indeed,  with  a  drooping,  sallow  face, 
and  as  Ernestine  shrewdly  suspected,  he  was  making  less 
money  at  the  dry-goods  shop  where  he  worked  than  she  made 
at  the  laundry.  But  for  a  time  they ' '  went  out  together  "  —  a 
better  phrase  than  became  "engaged."  Then  Ernestine, 
with  an  unexpected  keenness  of  vision  and  readiness  to  recog- 
nize a  fact,  even  if  it  hurt  her  pride,  knew  that  the  man  was 
marrying  her  to  be  taken  care  of.  She  had  seen  enough  of 
that  sort  of  marriage  and  had  no  mind  for  it.  If  he  had 
wanted  her  with  genuine  passion,  she  would  have  lived  with 
him  —  and  gladly.  But  the  shame  of  it  all  was  that  he  had 
no  desire  of  any  kind  for  her.  And  she  was  not  bad  looking 
in  spite  of  her  deformity  and  her  glasses.  Her  large,  regular 
face  was  full  of  intelligence,  and  her  black  hair  was  thick 
and  slightly  curling.  But  no  man  wanted  her,  just  for  her- 
self. She  looked  the  fact  in  the  face  —  and  moved  to  another 
boarding-house. 

About  that  time  another  change  took  place  in  the  laundry 
business.  The  old  proprietor  sold  out  to  two  young  men  who 
knew  little  about  the  business.  They  incorporated  as  the 
"Twentieth  Century  Domestic  Laundry"  and  left  the  man- 
agement in  Ernestine's  competent  hands.  The  old  location 
was  bought  for  a  loft  building,  and  a  new  building  to  be 
wholly  occupied  by  the  laundry  business  was  put  up  farther 
north.  Ernestine  disliked  leaving  her  family,  as  she  called 


318  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"number  232,"  but  she  judged  that  even  they  would  not 
remain  long  after  all  their  light  had  been  cut  off  by  the 
loft  building.  Anyway  she  had  no  time  for  sentimental 
regrets,  for  the  business,  with  fresh  blood  and  new  capital, 
was  growing  past  all  belief.  "Everybody  has  to  get  washed 
some  time,"  was  one  of  Ernestine's  sayings,  and  it  seemed  as 
if  a  great  many  had  to  be  washed  by  the  Twentieth  Century 
Company.  She  was  neck  and  neck  with  the  expanding  busi- 
ness, and  her  salary  went  up  rapidly  until  by  the  time  she 
came  into  Milly's  life  she  was  drawing  five  thousand  dollars 
a  year,  and  earning  it  all  as  the  responsible  head  of  a  busi- 
ness that  netted  twenty  per  cent  on  its  capital,  with  nearly 
a  hundred  operatives  under  her. 

In  trade  circles  Ernestine  was  known  as  the  "Laundry- 
man,"  a  name  in  which  respect  was  mixed  with  chaff.  Er- 
nestine did  not  care.  She  knew  that  she  had  "made  good," 
and  it  was  pleasant.  She  could  afford  now  to  have  a  home 
of  her  own,  and  so  she  had  installed  herself  in  this  apartment, 
far  out  of  the  dirt  and  the  noise  in  which  she  had  lived  her 
life.  She  filled  it  with  a  strange  assortment  of  furniture  and 
ornamental  accessories  that  did  not  please  her.  Somehow 
after  all  her  years  of  longing,  and  all  her  efforts  to  make  a 
home  like  other  people,  she  had  failed  lamentably,  and  she 
knew  it. 

"I  guess  it  ain't  in  me!"  she  confessed  to  Milly. 

Nevertheless,  she  kept  the  vision  of  it,  —  the  vision  she 
had  had  through  the  swaying  muslin  curtains  of  "number 
232." 

Thus  far  Ernestine  had  come  when  she  happened  into 
Milly's  life.  Only  the  merest  outline  of  her  strenuous,  if 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  319 

monotonous,  existence  has  been  given,  and  though  Ernestine 
deserves  much  more,  —  deserves  to  be  known  in  her  mind 
and  her  feelings,  yes,  and  in  her  soul,  —  she  must  put  up, 
as  she  did  in  life,  with  getting  less  than  her  deserts,  and  let 
her  rough  actions  reveal  her  nature  imperfectly. 


X 

MILLY'S  NEW  MARRIAGE 

THE  next  morning  —  it  was  Sunday  —  when  Ernestine 
presented  herself  at  the  Reddon  flat  to  inquire  in  her  heavy, 
grumbling  voice  for  "the  little  gurl,"  Milly  had  difficulty  in 
recognizing  the  woman  who  had  offered  Virginia  an  asylum 
the  night  before.  Ernestine  was  now  clothed  in  a  well-cut 
walking  suit  of  dark  blue  broadcloth,  which  became  her 
square  figure  much  better  than  the  soft  folds  of  the  rose- 
pink  negligee.  Yet  Milly  thought  her  "quite  common," 
and  had  a  momentary  pang,  realizing  how  she  and  her  daugh- 
ter had  come  down  in  the  world  when  they  were  obliged  to 
have  such  neighbors.  But  Ernestine  Geyer  was  not  "com- 
mon," and  Milly,  with  her  quick  instinct  for  personal  values, 
realized  it  as  soon  as  she  could  recover  from  the  shock  of  the 
harsh  voice  and  the  ungrammatical  idiom. 

After  the  obvious  remarks  about  the  evening's  episode 
and  some  conversation  with  Virginia,  for  whom  the  stranger's 
withered  hand  had  a  great  fascination,  there  was  a  pause. 
It  was  time  for  Ernestine  to  depart,  and  she  knew  it ;  but 
either  her  awkwardness  kept  her  fixed  in  her  chair  or  she  was 
too  much  fascinated  by  Milly  to  stir.  This  morning  Milly 
had  put  on  a  loose  silk  blouse,  open  at  the  neck,  in  which  she 
looked  very  pretty  and  girlish.  Ernestine  stared  at  her  in 
frank  admiration.  Milly  could  not  understand  that  she 
embodied  to  this  "queer"  woman  all  that  her  heart  had 

320 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  321 

secretly  longed  for,  —  all  the  f emininism  in  which  she  knew 
herself  to  be  utterly  lacking.  She  tried  to  take  Virginia  in 
her  lap  to  caress  her,  but  that  demure  little  lady,  submitting 
politely  for  a  few  moments,  slipped  off  at  the  first  chance 
and  took  refuge  in  her  mother's  lap,  where  she  snuggled  with 
conscious  pleasure.  Ernestine  did  not  know  how  to  hold 
a  child. 

"That's  a  nice  picter,"  Ernestine  grumbled,  covering 
mother  and  daughter  with  glowing  eyes.  "Wished  I  had 
one  of  'em  in  my  place  !" 

"Perhaps  you  will  some  day,"  Milly  replied  politely.  But 
Ernestine  shook  her  head. 

"Not  unless  I  took  one  out  of  an  asylum.  I've  thought 
of  that,  but  I  guess  it  ain't  the  same  thing." 

"Are  you  all  alone?"  Virgie  asked  gravely. 

Ernestine  nodded  and  added  in  a  burst  of  confidence  to 
Milly,  - 

"And  it  is  lonely,  I  can  tell  you,  coming  home  every  night 
from  your  work  to  find  just  a  hired  girl  waitin'  for  you  and 
your  food  on  the  table  !" 

To  which  Milly  made  some  commonplace  rejoinder,  and 
as  another  pause  threatened  she  remarked  pleasantly,  — 

"Where  do  you  suppose  I  was  last  night,  when  I  should 
have  been  at  home  looking  after  my  little  girl?  At  a  suf- 
frage meeting.  Wasn't  that  like  the  modern  mother?" 

"Were  you  at  that  swell  Mrs. 's  house  with  all  those 

big-bugs  ?  "  Ernestine  questioned  excitedly. 

"Yes.  .  .  .  There  were  speeches  about  the  suffrage, — 
the  reasons  why  woman  should  have  the  vote,  you  know." 

"I  read  all  about  it  in  the  paper  this  morning." 
y 


322  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Milly  recalled  what  the  interesting  stranger  had  said  to 
her  about  the  point  of  view  of  actual  women  workers,  and 
inquired,  — 

"What  do  you  think  about  suffrage,  Miss  Geyer?" 

Ernestine  gave  a  hoarse  laugh. 

"I  don't  think  much,"  she  said  succinctly. 

Milly  made  some  remarks  on  the  subject,  quoting  freely 
from  Hazel  Fredericks  on  the  injustices  to  women  in  this 
man-made  world.  Ernestine  listened  with  a  smile  of  scep- 
tical amusement  on  her  homely  face,  and  slowly  shook  her 
head. 

"There  ain't  much  in  that"  she  pronounced  dogmatically. 
"The  trouble  ain't  there.  Any  working-woman  will  tell 
you  she  ain't  bothered  much  by  lack  of  political  power. 
We've  got  all  the  political  powers  we  can  use.  .  .  .  What 
does  it  amount  to,  anyhow?  Things  aren't  done  in  this 
world  by  voting  about  'em." 

She  easily  threw  down  the  feeble  structure  of  Milly's 
arguments,  which  were  largely  borrowed  from  the  talk  she 
had  heard  the  night  before.  Ernestine  spoke  with  the  as- 
surance of  one  who  has  had  reason  to  know. 

"What  women  want  is  money,  ain't  it?  Same  as  the 
men?"  she  demanded  flatly. 

"That's  so  !"  Milly  assented  heartily. 

"And  they'll  get  it  when  they  know  how  to  do  something 
somebody  wants  done  as  well  as  a  man  can.  They  do  get 
it  now  when  they've  got  something  to  give  —  that's  truth  !" 

She  gave  Milly  a  brief  account  of  her  own  struggles  in  the 
labor  market,  which  interested  Milly  deeply. 

"Now  how  did  I  get  where  I  am  to-day?"  she  concluded 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  323 

dramatically,  drawing  up  her  right  sleeve  and  pointing  to 
the  withered  arm.  "Because  of  that.  It  taught  me  a  lesson 
when  I  was  nothing  but  an  empty-headed  girl.  That  and 
the  burn  on  my  leg  made  a  man  of  me,  because  it  took  most 
of  the  woman  thing  out  of  me.  I  learned  to  think  like  a 
man  and  to  act  like  a  man.  I  learned  my  job,  same  as  a 
man.  Yes  !  And  beat  my  boss  at  it  so  he  had  to  pay  me 
a  man's  wages  to  keep  me,  and  the  company  has  to  pay  me 
big  money  now  —  or  I'd  go  out  and  get  it  somewheres  else." 

Milly  was  impressed.     She  said  doubtfully,  — 

"But  you  had  great  ability  to  do  all.  that." 

Ernestine  shook  her  head,  - 

"Not  so  much  more'n  most." 

"And  good  health." 

"Yes.  My  health  don't  trouble  me  —  and  that's  partly 
because  I've  had  no  chance  to  fool  it  away  like  most  girls." 

"So  you  think  it  all  depends  on  the  women,"  Milly  said 
unconvinced. 

"Women  —  oh,  Lord  !"  Ernestine  exclaimed  irreverently, 
getting  up  and  walking  about  the  room.  She  examined 
the  books  and  the  few  sketches  of  Jack's  that  Milly  had 
kept  and  hung  on  the  bare  walls  of  the  Eeddons'  living- 
room. 

"My  husband  did  those,"  Milly  explained. 

"Widow?" 

Milly  nodded. 

Examining  a  drawing,  with  her  back  to  Milly,  Ernestine 
continued  her  remarks  on  the  great  question  :  — 

"Women  !  I  guess  the  trouble  with  'em  started  'way  back 
—  in  the  Garden  of  Eden.  They  didn't  like  being  put  out, 


324  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

and  they've  never  got  reconciled  to  it  since.  They're  mostly 
looking  for  some  soft  snap,  —  working- women,  that  is," 
she  said  deferentially  for  Milly's  sake.  "The  ones  I  know  at 
any  rate.  When  they're  young  they  mostly  expect  to  marry 
right  off  —  catch  some  feller  who'll  be  nice  to  'em  and  let 
'em  live  off  him.  But  they'd  oughter  know  there's  nothin' 
in  that  sort  of  marriage.  All  they  have  to  do  is  to  look  at 
all  the  women  the  men  get  tired  of  and  desert.  And  the 
slaves  the  mothers  are!  I  knew  that!"  she  interpolated 
with  a  woman's  pride  to  prove  to  this  other  pretty  woman 
that  even  she  was  not  single  in  the  world  because  she  had  not 
had  her  chance.  "I  c'd  have  married  once,  and  came  near 
making  one  great  fool  of  myself  like  the  others.  But  I  got 
wise  in  time.  You  see  he  weren't  no  good,"  she  explained 
frankly.  "  I  expect,  though,  he's  eatin'  off  some  other  woman 
before  this.  .  .  .  Girls  always  expect  to  draw  the  grand 
prize  in  the  lottery,  where  there's  mostly  blanks,  and  get  a 
man  who'll  love  'em  more'n  anythin'  else  in  the  world,  and 
give  'em  a  good  time  all  their  lives.  Ain't  that  so  ?  " 

Milly  agreed  with  reservations.  Ernestine's  observations 
had  been  confined  to  a  class  of  women  with  whom  Milly  was 
not  familiar,  but  her  conclusions  applied  fairly  well  to  the 
class  Milly  knew  best,  —  the  so-called  "educated"  and  well- 
to-do  women. 

"Well,  that  ain't  life,"  Ernestine  pronounced  with  clench- 
ing force. 

"Women  have  hearts,  you  must  remember,"  Milly  sighed 
a  little  sentimentally.  "They'll  always  be  foolish." 

"Not  that  way  —  when  they  learn  !" 

"I  wonder." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  325 

"And  that's  the  reason  I've  been  givin'  yer  why  girls 
don't  take  to  any  work  seriously  and  make  somethin'  of  it, 
same  as  a  man  has  to.  Oh,  I've  seen  lots  of  'em  —  just 
lots!" 

She  waved  a  hand  disgustedly. 

Milly  was  now  thoroughly  interested  in  her  new  acquaint- 
ance, and  they  went  deeper  into  the  complicated  woman-ques- 
tion. Ernestine,  she  perceived,  had  learned  her  lessons  in  the 
hard  school  of  the  man's  world  of  give  and  take,  and  learned 
them  thoroughly.  And  she  had  the  rare  ability  to  learn  by 
experience.  This  with  her  good  health  and  an  innate  sense  of 
orderliness  and  thrift,  possibly  due  to  the  Teutonic  strain  in 
her  blood,  had  sufficed  to  put  her  ahead  in  the  race.  For  she 
was  even  less  educated  than  Milly,  and  naturally  less  quick. 
But  having  touched  realities  all  her  life,  she  had  achieved 
an  abiding  sense  of  fact  that  Milly  was  now  totally  incapable 
of  acquiring.  Her  philosophy  was  simple,  but  it  embraced 
the  woman  question,  suffrage,  and  the  man-made  world. 
To  live,  she  said,  you  must  give  something  of  yourself  that 
is  worth  the  while  of  Somebody  Else  to  take  and  pay  for  — 
pay  as  high  as  he  can  be  made  to  pay.  To  Milly  it  seemed  a 
harsh  philosophy.  She  wished  to  give  when  and  what  she 
liked  to  whom  she  pleased  and  take  whatever  she  wanted. 
It  was  the  failure  of  this  system  to  work  that  had  brought 
about  the  present  crisis  in  her  affairs. 

One  o'clock  arrived,  and  Milly,  who  was  genuinely  aroused 
by  the  harsh-voiced  working-woman,  invited  Ernestine  to 
stay  for  the  mid-day  meal,  which  on  account  of  the  child  was 
dinner  rather  than  lunch.  The  light  in  Ernestine's  black  eyes 


326  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

and  the  pleased,  humble  tone  in  which  she  exclaimed,  — 
"Oh,  may  I!"  touched  Milly. 

So  the  three  presently  sat  down  around  the  small  table, 
which  Milly  had  served  in  the  front  room  of  the  flat  rather 
than  in  the  dark  pocket  of  a  dining-room.  That  seemed  to 
Ernestine  a  very  brilliant  idea,  and  she  was  also  much  im- 
pressed by  the  daintiness  of  the  table  and  the  little  details 
of  the  meal.  Milly  had  a  faculty  of  getting  some  results 
even  from  such  unpromising  material  as  Marion  Reddon's 
sullen  Swede.  She  knew  very  well  how  food  should  be  cooked 
and  served,  how  gentlefolk  were  in  the  habit  of  taking  their 
food  as  a  delightful  occasion  as  well  as  a  chance  to  appease 
hunger,  and  she  always  insisted  upon  some  sort  of  form.  So 
the  midday  meal,  which  seemed  to  Milly  poor  and  forlorn 
compared  with  what  she  had  known  in  her  life,  was  a  reve- 
lation to  Ernestine  of  social  grace  and  daintiness.  Her 
keen  eyes  followed  Milly 's  every  motion,  and  she  noted  how 
each  dish,  and  spoon,  and  fork  was  placed.  All  this,  she 
realized,  was  what  she  had  been  after  and  failed  to  get.  Milly 
apologized  for  the  simple  meal,  —  "Hilda  isn't  much  of  a 
cook,  and  since  we've  been  by  ourselves,  I  have  lost  interest 
in  doing  things." 

"It  ain't  the  food,"  Ernestine  replied  oracularly. 

(When  Virgie  went  to  take  her  nap,  she  inquired  of  her 
mother  why  the  nice  "queer"  lady  said  "ain't"  so  often.) 

It  was  raining  in  torrents,  and  the  two  women  spent  the  long 
afternoon  in  a  series  of  intimate  confidences.  Milly's  greatest 
gift  was  the  faculty  of  getting  at  all  sorts  of  people.  Now 
that  she  had  become  used  to  the  voice  and  the  grammar  of 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  327 

the  street  which  Ernestine  employed,  and  also  to  the  withered 
hand,  she  liked  the  working-woman  more  and  more  and  re- 
spected her  fine  quality.  And  Ernestine's  simple,  obvious 
admiration  for  Milly  and  everything  about  her  was  flattering. 
In  the  plain  woman's  eyes  was  the  light  of  adoration  that 
a  man  has  for  the  thing  most  opposite  to  his  soul,  most 
lacking  in  his  experience. 

In  the  course  of  this  long  talk  Milly  learned  everything 
about  Ernestine  Geyer's  life  contained  in  the  previous  chap- 
ter of  this  book  and  much  more  that  only  a  woman  could 
confide  in  another  woman,  —  intimate  details  of  her  honor- 
able struggle.  Ernestine  bared  her  hungry  heart,  her  lone- 
liness in  her  new  home,  and  her  feeling  of  helplessness  in  not 
getting,  after  all,  what  she  wanted  and  what  she  had  earned 
the  money  to  pay  for. 

"I  guess  I'm  too  much  of  a  man,"  she  said,  after  she  had 
described  her  solitary  life  in  the  apartment  below.  "  There 
ain't  enough  of  a  woman  left  in  me  to  make  a  home  !" 

Milly  tried  to  cheer  her  and  encourage  her,  and  promised 
to  take  dinner  with  her  some  day  and  give  her  any  sugges- 
tions she  could. 

After  that  Sunday  Milly  saw  Ernestine  Geyer  almost 
every  day  and  often  on  Sundays  for  the  whole  day.  Er- 
nestine was  fertile  in  clumsy  ways  of  wooing  the  new-found 
friends.  She  brought  Virgie  fruit  and  candies  and  toys  and 
insisted  upon  thrusting  flowers  and  dainties  on  Milly.  The 
latter  heartily  liked  the  " queer"  lady,  as  Virginia  still  called 
Ernestine,  and  invited  her  cordially  to  come  in  whenever  she 
would.  In  Milly 's  busier,  more  social  days,  Ernestine's 


328  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

devotion  might  have  proved  a  bore.  But  this  was  a  lonely 
winter.  Very  few  friends  came  to  see  her,  and  Milly  had 
many  idle  hours. 

Hazel  Fredericks  had  not  been  offended  by  Milly's  neglect 
to  take  advantage  of  her  opportunities  the  night  of  the  suf- 
frage meeting,  —  at  least  she  showed  no  pique  when  Milly 
finally  got  around  to  telephoning  her  friend  and  congratulat- 
ing her  on  her  successful  speech.  But  Hazel  had  become  so 
involved  in  the  movement  by  this  time,  especially  so  inti- 
mate with  the  fascinating  young  married  agitator,  that  she 
had  less  time  and  less  interest  to  spare  for  Milly's  small  af- 
fairs. She  was  planning  with  her  new  friend,  so  she  told 
Milly  when  she  did  get  out  to  the  flat,  a  serious  campaign 
that  promised  to  be  immensely  exciting,  —  nothing  less  than 
a  series  of  drawing-room  meetings  in  some  western  cities, 
especially  Chicago,  where  " Society"  had  shown  a  lamentable 
indifference  hitherto  to  the  Cause.  Presently  this  mission 
took  Hazel  Fredericks  altogether  beyond  Milly's  narrow 
sphere  for  the  remainder  of  the  winter.  From  time. to  time 
Milly  received  newspaper  clippings  and  an  occasional  hurried 
note  from  Hazel,  recounting  the  social  flutter  that  they  had 
created  by  their  meetings,  and  the  progress  the  Cause  was 
making  in  the  most  fashionable  circles  of  the  middle  west. 
Milly  envied  Hazel  this  new  and  exciting  experience,  and 
wished  she  might  be  in  Chicago  to  witness  the  triumphs  of 
the  two  missionaries.  But  she  realized,  nevertheless,  more 
than  ever  before,  her  unfitness  for  the  work.  She  no  longer 
had  a  very  fervent  faith  in  it.  .  .  . 

So  in  her  loneliness  she  came  to  accept  Ernestine  Geyer's 
companionship  and  devotion,  at  first  passively,  then  grate- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  329 

fully.  Together  they  took  Virginia  on  holiday  sprees  to  the 
theatre,  and  the  three  had  many  of  their  meals  together, 
usually  in  Milly's  apartment,  as  she  had  found  Ernestine's 
home  " impossible,"  a  " barracks,"  and  the  food,  —  "just 
food."  Virginia  had  gotten  used  to  the  withered  hand  and 
no  longer  found  Ernestine  so  " queer."  Like  the  little 
egotist  she  was,  as  most  children,  she  valued  this  new  friend 
for  all  the  good  things  that  came  from  her,  and  found  she 
could  "work"  Ernestine  much  easier  than  her  mother. 

"We  make  a  pretty  cosey  family,"  Ernestine  said  happily, 
summing  it  up  one  day  at  dinner. 

"Mama,  papa,  daughter,"  Virgie  added,  pointing  demurely 
to  Ernestine  as  "Papa."  After  that  the  Laundryman  was 
known  as  "Pa"  by  the  trio. 

Milly  was  occasionally  embarrassed  by  Ernestine,  —  and 
she  was  ashamed  of  her  feeling,  —  as  when  Clive  Reinhard 
came  in  on  them  one  evening  without  warning.  Reinhard 
glanced  at  the  squat  figure  of  the  Laundryman,  and  tried  to 
make  her  talk.  Fortunately  for  Milly's  feelings,  Ernestine 
sat  bolt  upright  and  tongue-tied  in  the  novelist's  presence 
and  thus  did  not  betray  her  ungrammatical  self.  But  she 
stayed  on  relentlessly  until  the  visitor  went,  and  observed 
afterwards,  — 

"So  that's  the  Johnnie  that  writes  the  books  I  see  in  the 
windows?  And  the  girls  are  crazy  about  'em  —  humph!" 
All  of  which  would  have  amused  the  popular  novelist. 

It  was  inevitable,  of  course,  that  sooner  or  later  Ernestine 
should  meet  all  of  Milly's  friends  who  still  sought  her  out. 
And  she  always  sat  through  these  occasions,  quiet  and  sharp- 
eyed  ;  when  she  trusted  herself  to  speak,  her  harsh,  positive 


330  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

voice  had  the  effect  of  dropping  a  piece  of  china  on  the  floor. 
Milly  was  often  mortified  at  first,  though  by  this  time  she 
cared  for  Ernestine  so  genuinely  that  she  would  not  let  her 
suspect  or  hurt  her  feelings.  She  convinced  herself  that  Er- 
nestine's grammar  was  an  accident  of  the  slightest  impor- 
tance, and  that  as  a  person  she  compared  quite  favorably 
with  all  the  people  she  knew. 

Ernestine's  fondness  for  Milly's  visitors  was  not  due  to 
any  vulgar  desire  to  push  herself  into  superior  circles,  merely 
a  human  curiosity  about  these  members  of  another  world 
and  a  pathetic  admiration  for  their  refinement.  With  the 
same  attitude  she  was  painstakingly,  if  shyly,  improving 
her  table  manners  and  her  speech.  To  Virginia's  relief  she 
had  largely  suppressed  "ain't"  already,  and  occasionally 
bestowed  a  final  syllable  on  the  participles. 

But  Milly  had  many  more  real  worries  than  these  trifling 
social  maladjustments  between  her  old  friends  and  her  new 
one.  Her  small  funds  were  dwindling  rapidly,  as  usual, 
even  with  the  practice  of  a  greater  economy  than  she  had  ever 
before  attempted.  All  her  feeble  efforts  to  find  employment 
and  earn  money  had  failed.  She  felt  herself  slipping  down, 
and  with  all  her  courageous  determination  to  save  herself 
from  social  chaos  she  was  like  a  bird  fluttering  at  the  brink 
of  a  chasm,  unable  to  wing  itself  steadily  out  of  danger.  The 
Reddons,  she  knew,  would  soon  need  their  apartment,  for 
Marion  was  coming  north  in  the  first  warm  weather.  Then 
there  would  be  for  herself  and  Virginia  nothing  but  a  board- 
ing-house, from  which  she  shrank.  And  after  that,  what? 
Mornings  she  woke  to  consciousness  with  a  start  of  terror, 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  331 

realizing  that  the  weeks  were  melting  to  days,  —  days  of 
grace  as  for  a  criminal !  What  should  she  do  ?  What 
could  she  do  ?  She  envied  Ernestine  as  she  had  never  envied 
any  one  in  her  life,  when  she  saw  her  striding  off  in  the  morn- 
ing, her  head  in  the  air,  a  serious  scowl  on  her  plain  face, 
competent  and  equipped  in  the  face  of  life.  .  .  . 

Ernestine  found  her  one  evening  at  a  low  point  in  her 
depression  over  her  fate.  Milly  had  told  far  less  of  her 
circumstances  to  the  working-woman  than  Ernestine  had 
told  of  hers  in  their  mutual  confidences.  Social  pride  —  a 
sense  of  caste  —  had  prevented  Milly  from  confessing  her 
miserable  situation.  But  now  she  unfolded  the  whole  story, 
with  a  few  tears. 

"If  it  wasn't  for  Virgie,"  she  sobbed,  "I'd  walk  into  the 
river  to-night  —  I'd  do  anything  to  end  it.  I'm  no  good." 

"Don't  you  talk  like  that,  dearie!"  Ernestine  said,  get- 
ting up  impulsively  and  with  her  heavy  tread  crossing  the 
room.  She  took  Milly  hi  her  strong  arms  and  held  her 
tight.  "  Don't  ever  say  those  things  again  !"  she  murmured 
in  an  uncertain  voice,  hugging  the  yielding  figure  to  her. 
"Don't  I  know  how  you  feel  ?  .  .  .  I  guessed  things  weren't 
very  rosy  with  you,  but  I  didn't  like  to  ask  you  until  you 
were  ready  to  say.  .  .  .  Now  we'll  straighten  this  thing 
out." 

Her  robust,  confident  manner  cheered  Milly  as  much  as 
her  embrace.  She  trusted  Ernestine's  strength  as  she  had 
once  that  of  her  husband.  Ernestine  went  at  things  like  a 
man  hi  more  ways  than  one.  Releasing  Milly,  she  stood 
over  her  frowningly,  her  hands  on  her  hips,  and  looked 
steadily,  intently  at  the  pitiful  face  of  the  other  woman, 


332  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

" Couldn't  I  do  something  in  the  laundry?"  Milly  sug- 
gested timidly.  "You  employ  so  many  women  there,"  she 
faltered.  It  had  taken  a  struggle  with  her  pride  to  con- 
template this  work.  "I'm  pretty  strong." 

Ernestine  smiled  and  shook  her  head  very  positively. 

"No,  that's  one  thing  that  wouldn't  do.  You'd  be  no  good 
as  a  working-woman  now,  dearie  !" 

"But  I  must  do  something!"  Milly  wailed,  "or  starve 
and  let  Virgie  go  to  her  father's  people.  Isn't  there  any- 
thing I  can  do  in  the  world?" 

She  had  reached  the  ultimate  bottom  of  life,  she  felt,  and 
her  demand  had  a  tragic  pathos  in  it.  She  waited  for  her 
answer. 

"Yes!"  Ernestine  exclaimed,  a  smile  of  successful  think- 
ing on  her  broad  face.  "You  can  make  a  home  for  me  —  a 
real  one  —  that's  what  you  can  do  —  fine  !  Now  listen," 
she  insisted,  as  she  saw  the  look  of  disappointment  on  Milly's 
expectant  face.  "Listen  to  me  —  it  ain't  bad  at  all." 

And  she  unfolded  her  plan,  recounting  again  her  longing 
for  her  own  hearth,  and  proving  to  Milly  that  she  could  do 
a  real,  useful  thing  in  the  world,  if  she  would  make  life 
pleasanter  and  happier  for  one  who  was  able  to  earn  money 
for  three. 

"Don't  wait  for  your  friends  to  come  back,"  she  urged. 
"Just  pack  right  up  as  soon  as  you  can  and  move  down- 
stairs. Do  you  suppose  Virgie's  asleep?  We'll  tell  her  to- 
morrer  any  way.  .  .  .  And  you  do  with  my  shack  what 
you  want,  —  any  old  thing,  so's  you  let  me  sleep  there.  It'll 
be  fine,  fine !" 

And  so  it  was  agreed,  although  Milly  was  not  greatly 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  333 

pleased  with  the  prospect  of  becoming  homemaker  and  com- 
panion to  the  Laundryman.  It  was  not  very  different  in 
essentials  from  her  marriage  with  Jack,  and  she  recognized 
now  that  she  had  not  made  a  success  of  that  on  the  economic 
side.  In  short,  it  was  like  so  much  else  in  her  life,  practically 
all  her  life,  she  felt  bitterly,  —  it  was  a  shift,  a  compromise, 
a  pis-aller,  and  this  time  it  was  a  social  descent  also.  What 
would  her  friends  say?  But  Milly  courageously  put  that 
cheap  thought  out  of  her  mind.  If  this  was  all  that  she 
could  find  to  do  to  support  herself  and  her  child,  —  if  it  was 
all  that  she  was  good  for  in  this  world,  —  she  would  do  it 
and  swallow  her  pride  with  her  tears. 

And  she  was  sincerely  grateful  to  Ernestine  for  the  warm- 
hearted way  in  which  she  had  put  her  proposal,  as  if  it  were 
a  real  favor  to  her.  She  made  this  one  mental  reservation 
to  herself,  —  it  should  last  only  until  she  found  "something 
better"  as  a  solution.  When  Milly  told  the  little  girl  of  the 
new  move,  Virgie  was  delighted.  "It'll  be  like  having  a 
real  man  in  the  house  again,"  she  said.  "We'll  have  to 
teach  her  how  to  speak  like  we  do,  shan't  we,  mama?" 

Ernestine  came  bubbling  hi  the  next  day  with  a  new  in- 
spiration. 

"Been  thinking  of  our  scheme  all  night,"  she  announced 
breathlessly,  "and  couldn't  attend  to  business  I  was  so  ex- 
cited. Now  this  is  the  conclusion  I  got  to.  You  can't  make 
a  home  in  one  of  these  flat-boxes,  can  you?" 

Milly  agreed  listlessly  that  they  were  a  poor  compromise 
for  the  real  thing. 

"Well,  I  said  to  myself,  —  'Why  not  a  real  house?'     So 


334  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

this  morning  I  quit  work  and  took  a  taxi  so's  I  could  get 
over  ground  faster  and  went  down  — " 

"I  know/'  Milly  interrupted  with  a  laugh,  —  "to  number 
232!" 

"Yes  !  And  they're  there  still,  and  I've  got  number  236  ! 
What  do  you  think  of  that?  It  don't  take  me  long  to  do 
business  when  I  got  an  idea.  ...  Of  course  there  is  that 
loft  building  opposite,  but  it's  thin  and  don't  take  much 
light.  ...  So  to-morrow,  Mrs.  Bragdon,  you  meet  me  at 
luncheon  and  we'll  go  down  and  look  over  our  new  home !" 

How  could  any  one  be  doleful  under  so  much  joy  ?  Milly 
kissed  Ernestine  with  genuine  emotion. 

"It  will  be  splendid.  Virgie  will  like  a  house  so  much 
more  than  this." 

"Of  course,  of  course  —  it's  the  only  proper  thing  for  a 
family.  .  .  .  You'll  have  to  do  the  whole  thing,  Madam." 
(Ernestine  had  a  curious  shyness  about  using  Milly's  name.) 
"I'll  give  you  'Carter  Blanch'  as  they  say.  .  .  .  Only  one 
thing!" 

She  shook  her  thick  finger  at  Milly  solemnly. 

"What's  that?" 

"Muslin  curtains  at  all  the  front  windows,  and  a  real 
fireplace  in  the  livin'-room  — " 

"And  window  boxes  at  the  windows  and  real  oil  lamps  on 
the  table,  Mr.  Geyer ! "  Milly  completed,  entering  into 
Ernestine's  spirit. 

"We'll  be  comfy  and  homelike,  don't  you  think  so?" 
Ernestine  shouted  gleefully,  putting  an  arm  around  Milly's 
soft  figure.  "Now  I've  got  what  I  want,"  she  said  almost 
solemnly. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  335 

"  Don't  be  too  sure  —  I'm  a  pretty  bad  housekeeper." 

"I  know  you're  not." 

"Careless  and  horribly  extravagant  —  every  one  says  so." 

"I  won't  let  you  break  me!  .  .  .  Say,  you'd  ought  to  be 
married  to  a  real  man  —  that's  what  you  are  made  for." 

" Thanks!"  Milly  said  a  little  sadly.  "I've  had  all  of 
that  I  want.  .  .  .  This  suits  me  far  better." 

"Well,  it  does  me,  anyway  !" 

Thus  Milly's  second  marriage  came  off.  In  another  month 
she  and  Virginia  were  living  quite  happily  in  Ernestine  Geyer's 
establishment  at  "number  236,"  with  muslin  curtains  behind 
the  windows,  and  flower-boxes. 


PART  FIVE 
THE  CAKE  SHOP 


MILLY  was  content.  At  least  she  felt  that  she  ought  to 
be,  and  she  really  was  —  for  a  time.  Thanks  to  Ernestine's 
"Carter  Blanch,"  she  had  made  a  comfortable,  homelike 
interior  out  of  the  little  old  house,  in  which  she  installed  her 
own  furniture  and  almost  nothing  of  Ernestine's.  Sam 
Reddon  helped  her  make  the  alterations  and  decorate  afresh 
"number  236,"  as  the  new  home  came  to  be  known  among 
Milly's  friends.  Reddon  was  explosively  enthusiastic  over 
the  Laundryman,  whom  he  described  as  a  "regular  old  sport," 
"one  of  the  finest,"  "the  right  sort,"  and  the  climax  of  praise 
—  "one  first-class  man."  He  took  a  mischievous  delight  in 
drawing  her  out,  especially  on  the  aesthetic  side,  where  she 
was  wildest,  and  he  revelled  in  her  idiom,  which  reminded 
him  of  the  dear  argot  of  his  beloved  city,  and  which  he  de- 
clared was  "the  language  of  the  future."  Clive  Reinhard, 
also,  who  came  to  dinner  at  the  new  house  very  soon,  ap- 
proved warmly  of  Ernestine.  In  his  more  conventional 
vocabulary  she  was  "a  character,"  "a  true  type,"  and  "a 
trump."  He  liked  her  all  the  better,  perhaps,  because  he 
did  not  feel  obliged  to  study  her  professionally,  and  relaxed 
in  her  company. 

Indeed,  all  the  men  Milly  knew  liked  Ernestine  Geyer 
and  quickly  got  the  habit  of  dropping  in  at  "number  236" 
at  all  hours,  —  it  was  so  conveniently  near  their  offices  and 

339 


340  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

clubs,  they  said.  They  came  for  breakfast  and  luncheon 
and  tea,  and  even  for  whiskey  and  cigarettes  after  the 
theatre.  With  the  blunted  sense  of  fine  proprieties  char- 
acteristic of  their  sex,  they  approved  unreservedly  of  Milly's 
new  marriage.  In  Reddon's  frank  phrase  it  was  "an  ex- 
traordinary fit."  "You  two  are  complements  —  which  is 
more  than  one  can  say  of  most  regular  marriages." 

(It  was  more  than  Milly  could  say  of  her  union  with  Jack, 
alas  !) 

"  I  wonder  more  women  don't  do  the  same  thing,"  the 
architect  continued  in  a  vein  of  philosophical  speculation; 
"get  married  to  other  women.  Now  Ernestine  has  every 
good  quality  of  a  man,  and  she  can't  deceive  you  with  a 
chorus  girl !  It  cuts  out  all  the  sex  business,  which  is  a 
horrid  nuisance  —  see  the  newspapers." 

"Sam  !"  Milly  warned,  and  then  ventured,  —  "How  about 
the  children  —  where  would  they  come  in?" 

"That  is  a  difficulty,"  Reddon  admitted,  stretching  his 
feet  to  the  fire. 

"You  see  I  had  mine  already,  —  bless  her  little  heart !" 

"One  of  'em  would  have  to  do  as  you  did,"  Sam  mused, 
"get  the  children  on  the  side." 

At  this  point  Milly  with  a  "Sam,  don't  be  horrid"  shut 
off  further  social  theorizing.  Ernestine  grinned  and  chuckled 
over  Sam's  sallies.  As  Reddon  said,  —  "You  can  say  any- 
thing to  her  !  She  has  a  man's  sense  of  humor,  —  the  only 
woman  I  ever  saw  except  Marion  who  has." 

With  the  exception  of  Marion,  Milly's  women  friends  were 
much  more  dubious  than  the  men  about  the  new  household. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  341 

Mrs.  Bunker  and  Mrs.  Billman,  of  course,  had  long  since 
lost  sight  of  Milly  in  the  course  of  her  migrations.  Although 
Hazel  Fredericks  looked  her  up  soon  after  her  return  from 
the  suffrage  tour  and  praised  the  little  house  and  said  of 
the  domestic  arrangement,  —  "How  interesting!  .  .  .  Miss 
Geyer  must  be  a  woman  of  remarkable  force  of  character. 
...  It  is  a  wise  experiment/'  etc.,  yet  Milly  knew  that  to 
others  Hazel  would  shrug  expressive  shoulders  and  drop 
eyelids  over  muddy  eyes  and  in  other  feminine  ways  indicate 
her  sense  of  Milly's  social  descent.  And  from  this  time  the 
friendship  between  them  declined  swiftly.  Hazel  explained, 
"They  were  interested  in  different  things,"  and  "Milly 
doesn't  care  for  ideas,  you  know."  Mrs.  Fredericks,  who 
considered  herself  to  be  in  the  flood-tide  of  the  modern  intel- 
lectual movement,  had  few  moments  to  spare  for  her  insig- 
nificant friend.  Milly  realized  this  with  a  touch  of  bitterness. 
"  I  can't  do  anything  for  her  in  any  way.  I  can't  help  on 
her  game."  She  knew  that  these  ambitious,  modern,  in- 
tellectual women,  with  whom  she  had  been  thrown,  had  no 
use  for  people  "out  of  the  game." 

It  was  that  really,  more  than  the  fact  that  she  had  lost 
caste  by  keeping  house  for  a  business  woman,  that  cost  her 
women's  friendship.  Milly  no  longer  in  the  least  "  counted." 
She  had  done  something  rather  "queer"  from  the  feminine 
point  of  view,  however  sensible  a  solution  of  her  own  problem 
it  might  be.  She  had  confessed  herself  without  ambition  and 
"  aim,"  as  Hazel  would  put  it ;  had  no  social  sense  or  wish 
"to  be  Somebody,"  as  Mrs.  Billman  would  put  it.  She  had 
become  just  plain  Mrs.  Nobody.  Of  course  she  could  not 
entertain  in  any  but  the  most  informal,  simple  fashion  as 


342  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

she  entertained  the  men  who  came  to  the  house,  and  women 
find  no  distinction  in  that  sort  of  hospitality  and  do  not  like 
to  offer  it.  All  this  Milly  realized  more  and  more,  as  any 
woman  would  have,  when  the  house  had  settled  into  its 
groove.  She  bravely  put  the  thoughts  aside,  although  they 
rankled  and  later  manifested  themselves,  as  such  things 
must.  For  the  first  time  her  own  sex  dropped  Milly,  and 
it  cut. 

Meantime  there  was  much  that  was  pleasant  and  comfort- 
ing in  her  new  life  in  pretty  little  "  number  236,"  and  Milly 
got  what  joy  there  was  out  of  Virginia's  delight  in  having  a 
real  home  and  Ernestine's  beaming  happiness  all  the  time 
she  was  in  the  house.  The  little  girl  could  return  now  to 
that  "very  nice  school"  where  other  nice  little  girls  went. 
She  departed  every  morning  beside  the  Laundryman,  tug- 
ging at  her  arm,  skipping  and  chattering  like  a  blackbird  in 
June.  Ernestine  saw  her  safely  up  the  school  steps  and  then 
took  the  car  to  her  business.  Milly,  after  the  housekeeping 
and  her  morning  duties,  walked  up  town  for  her  daughter 
and  spent  most  of  the  afternoons  with  her,  as  she  had  not 
much  else  to  do.  She  had  suggested  at  the  beginning  helping 
Ernestine  in  some  way  in  the  business,  but  the  Laundry- 
man had  not  encouraged  that.  In  fact,  she  showed  a  curious 
reluctance  in  even  having  Milly  visit  the  office  or  call  for  her 
there. 

"It  ain't  any  place  for  you,  dearie,"  she  said.  "You 
just  stick  to  your  end  of  the  business,  the  house  —  and  that's 
enough." 

Milly  paid  much  more  attention  to  the  details  of  their 
simple  housekeeping  than  she  had  ever  cared  to  do  for  her- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  343 

self  and  Jack.  It  may  have  been  from  a  sense  of  obligation 
in  spending  Ernestine's  money,  for  after  all  the  Laundryman 
was  not  her  legal  husband.  Or  it  may  have  been  due  to  the 
fact  that  Ernestine,  being  another  woman,  knew  and  could 
not  be  easily  bluffed  with,  " Everybody  does  that,"  "You 
can't  get  along  with  less  and  live,  anyhow,"  etc.,  as  a 
mere  man  could.  Nor  did  she  like  to  wheedle  a  woman. 
Whatever  the  cause,  Milly  gave  up  her  lazy  habit  of  tele- 
phoning to  the  dearest  stores  for  supplies  or  letting  the  ser- 
vants do  the  ordering,  and  went  forth  herself  each  morning 
to  market.  She  accepted  Ernestine's  suggestions  about 
where  things  could  be  bought  cheaply,  and  even  conde- 
scended to  enter  the  large  department  stores  where  groceries 
were  sold  for  cash  at  wholesale  rates.  The  Laundryman 
purchased  all  the  supplies  for  her  business,  and  she  knew 
that  buying  was  a  science  and  a  game  combined,  —  a  very 
ancient  game  which  is  the  basis  of  "trade."  She  took 
it  for  granted  that  Milly  would  play  the  game  to  the  best 
advantage  for  all  of  them,  and  after  a  few  attempts  at  the 
old  slovenly,  wasteful  method  of  providing,  Milly  accepted 
the  situation  and  did  the  best  she  knew  how  to  meet  Ernes- 
tine's idea.  "Number  236"  was  to  be  well  stocked  with  an 
abundance  of  wholesome  food,  but  there  was  to  be  no  waste 
and  no  "flummery."  In  a  word,  "efficiency." 

There  was  almost  no  friction  between  them.  It  would 
seem  that  the  Laundryman  knew  how  to  be  both  gentle  and 
firm,  —  the  requisites,  so  the  sages  say,  for  successful  do- 
mesticity. Jack  had  often  been  not  gentle  with  Milly,  and 
almost  never  firm.  Milly  did  not  take  seriously  his  constant 
complaint  over  bills,  and  hi  some  way  sooner  or  later  got 


344  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

what  she  wanted.  With  Ernestine  it  was  quite  different : 
she  did  not  dare  let  the  accounts  run  on  or  run  over.  After 
the  first  few  equivocations  she  had  her  bills  ready  for  exam- 
ination by  the  first  of  the  month,  and  they  were  reasonably 
near  the  figures  agreed  upon.  So,  as  Ernestine  put  it,  slap- 
ping her  knee  with  the  cheque-book,  "it  all  goes  as  slick  as 
paint." 

And  so,  to  sum  it  up  in  conventional  terms,  one  might 
call  Milly's  new  marriage  a  success  and  expect  that  the 
modest  little  household  of  "number  236"  would  go  its 
peaceful  way  uneventfully  to  nature's  fulfilment  of  a  com- 
fortable middle  age  —  and  thus  interest  us  no  more.  For  a 
time  both  Ernestine  and  Milly  so  believed  it  would  be. 
But  they  were  deceived.  Human  affairs,  even  of  the  hum- 
blest, rarely  arrange  themselves  thus  easily  and  logically. 

Milly,  in  spite  of  her  sincere  resolve  to  be  contented  with 
what  she  had,  was  growing  restless.  Once  this  orderly 
domestic  life  of  the  three  in  the  small  house  was  running 
smoothly,  she  began  to  feel  cramped,  full  of  unexpended 
energies.  She  would  have  spent  them  naturally  in  enter- 
taining and  the  usual  social  activity,  to  which  she  had  be- 
come accustomed  as  the  fit  expression  of  woman's  life,  but 
that  obviously  could  not  be  in  the  present  circumstances. 
Milly  recognized  this  and  did  not  attempt  the  impossible. 
Even  if  she  had  had  the  money,  Ernestine  was  not  one 
who  could  be  made  a  social  figure,  nor  could  she  be  ignored 
in  her  own  house.  The  situation,  as  has  been  described, 
had  a  flavor  of  social  irregularity,  like  an  unauthorized 
union,  and  the  social  penalty  must  be  paid.  With  Milly's 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  345 

lean  purse  there  was  not  much  shopping  to  be  done,  be- 
yond the  daily  marketing,  and  it  was  dreary  to  walk  the 
New  York  streets  and  gaze  into  tempting  shop  windows, 
though  Milly  did  a  good  deal  of  that  in  her  idle  hours.  She 
had  never  cared  to  read,  except  as  an  occasional  diversion,  or 
to  "improve  her  mind,"  as  Grandma  Ridge  might  have  put 
it,  by  lectures  such  as  Hazel  Fredericks  had  once  patronized. 
Lectures  bored  her,  she  admitted  frankly,  unless  she  knew 
the  lecturer  personally.  Perhaps  Hazel  and  her  set  were 
justified  in  condemning  Milly 's  general  lack  of  purpose 
and  aim  in  life.  But  it  should  be  remembered  that  the 
generation  with  which  Milly  began  had  never  recognized 
the  desirability  of  such  ideals  for  women,  and  Milly,  like 
many  of  her  sisters  in  the  middle  walk  of  life,  always  re- 
sented the  assumption  that  every  human  being,  including 
women,  should  have  a  plan  and  a  purpose  in  this  life. 
She  liked  to  think  of  herself  as  an  irresponsible,  instinctive 
vessel  of  divine  fire  to  bless  and  inspire.  But  such  vessels 
very  often  go  on  the  reefs  of  passion,  and  if  Milly  had  not 
been  so  thoroughly  normal  in  her  instincts,  she  might  have 
suffered  shipwreck  before  this.  Otherwise,  they  float  out 
at  middle  age  more  or  less  derelict  in  the  human  sea,  unless 
they  have  been  captured  and  converted  willy-nilly  to  some 
other's  purpose.  Now  Milly  was  drifting  towards  that 
dead  sea  of  purposeless  middle  age,  and  instinctively  feared 
her  fate. 

She  felt  that  her  present  life  with  the  Laundryman  offered 
her  no  outlet  for  her  powers,  and  this  was  the  period  when 
she  became  fertile  in  launching  schemes  for  which  she  dis- 
played a  few  weeks'  intense  enthusiasm  that  gradually 


346  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

died  out  before  Ernestine's  chilly  good  sense.  One  of 
the  first  of  these  enthusiasms  was  " Squabs."  She  tried  to 
interest  Ernestine  in  the  business  of  raising  squabs  for  the 
market.  She  had  read  in  some  country-life  magazine  of  a 
woman  who  had  made  a  very  good  income  by  breeding  this 
delicacy  for  the  New  York  market.  Ernestine  had  talked 
of  buying  a  farm  somewhere  near  the  city  for  the  summers, 
and  Milly  thought  this  could  be  made  into  a  productive 
enterprise.  "With  a  man  and  his  wife  to  run  it,"  they 
could  raise  squabs  by  the  thousands.  But  Ernestine,  who 
had  all  the  business  she  could  attend  to  with  her  laundry, 
was  apathetic.  She  averred  that  any  man  and  his  wife 
who  could  make  money  in  the  poultry  business  would  be 
exploiting  it  for  themselves,  not  for  "two  green-horn  women." 

The  next  proposal  was  "Violets,"  and  then  "Mush- 
rooms," to  which  Ernestine  was  equally  indifferent.  You 
had  to  get  your  market  in  every  case,  she  suspected.  "You 
don't  know  how  to  sell  violets  or  mushrooms,  dearie,  any 
more  than  you  know  how  to  raise  'em." 

"But  I  could  learn!"  Milly  pouted.  She  thought  Er- 
nestine was  unenterprising  and  also  underrated  her  ability, 
just  because  she  had  not  been  a  working- woman. 

"Twould  cost  too  much  for  you  to  learn,"  Ernestine 
replied  dryly. 

Milly's  little  schemes  were  oddly  always  of  the  luxury 
order,  —  to  cater  to  the  luxury-class,  —  squabs,  violets, 
mushrooms.  Her  ideas  revolved  about  the  parasitic  occu- 
pations because  they  seemed  to  promise  large,  immediate 
returns.  Rebuffed  in  these  first  attempts  she  brought 
forth  no  new  scheme  for  a  time,  but  she  was  seeking.  She 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  347 

envied  Ernestine  her  manlike  independence,  her  Bank- 
Account  aspect,  and  wanted  to  become  a  Business  Woman. 

One  invariable  objection  that  Ernestine  had  made  to  all 
Milly's  proposals  was:  — 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  that  business.  I  know 
the  laundry  business  from  the  skin  to  the  clothes-line  and 
home  again  —  and  that's  all !  It's  a  good  enough  business 
for  me.  Everybody  has  to  get  washed  sometimes!"  She 
was  for  the  fundamental,  basic  occupations  that  dealt  in 
universal  human  necessities,  and  once  said  to  Sam  Reddon, 
who  had  banteringly  offered  her  the  job  of  running  his  new 
office,  "No,  thank  you!  If  I  ever  make  a  change  from 
the  laundry,  I'm  going  into  the  liquor  business.  Every 
man  seems  to  need  his  drink  the  same  as  he  has  to  be 
washed."  (This  retort  had  immensely  pleased  Reddon, 
and  he  was  always  asking  Ernestine  when  she  would  be 
ready  to  start  a  saloon  with  him.) 

At  last  Milly  thought  she  had  cornered  Ernestine's  fa- 
vorite objection  by  a  new  scheme,  which  was  nothing  less 
than  starting  a  model  " Ideal  Laundry"  in  some  pretty 
country  spot  near  the  city,  "where  the  water  is  clean  and 
soft,"  and  there  were  green  lawns  and  hedges  on  which  to 
spread  the  clothes,  "as  they  do  abroad."  It  was  to  be 
manned  by  a  force  of  tidy,  white-clothed  laundresses,  who 
might  do  their  washing  bare-legged  in  the  running  brook. 
(She  described  to  Ernestine  the  picturesque,  if  primitive, 
laundry  customs  of  the  south  of  Europe.)  "They  do  such 
nice  work  over  there:  their  linen  is  as  soft  and  white  as 
snow, "  she  said. 

"And  whose  goin'  to  pay  for  all  that  gilt?"    Ernestine 


348  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

demanded  in  conclusion.  For  Milly  had  expatiated  on  the 
fortune  they  might  confidently  expect  from  the  new  laun- 
dry. Milly  was  sure  that  all  nice,  well-to-do  families  would 
be  only  too  thankful  to  pay  large  prices  for  their  laundry 
work,  if  they  could  be  assured  that  it  would  be  done  in 
such  sanitary,  picturesque  fashion  by  expert  laundresses. 
And  she  had  thought  of  another  plan  which  combined 
philanthropy  with  sestheticism  and  business.  They  might 
employ  " fallen  women"  as  laundresses  and  teach  them 
also  expert  mending  of  linen.  To  all  of  which  Ernestine 
smiled  as  one  would  at  the  fancies  of  an  engaging  child. 
She  said  at  the  end  in  her  heavy-voiced  way :  — 

"I  don't  know  how  it  is  in  Europe,  but  in  this  country 
you  don't  make  money  that  way.  You've  got  to  do  things 
cheap  and  do  'em  for  a  whole  lot  of  people  to  get  big  money 
in  anything.  It's  the  little  people  with  their  nickels  and 
tens  and  quarters  as  pile  up  the  fortunes." 

Milly  felt  that  Ernestine  betrayed  in  this  the  limitations 
of  her  plebeian  origin. 

"S'pose  now  you  c'd  get  all  the  capital  you  need  for 
your  Ideal  Laundry  —  who'd  patronize  it  ?  The  swells, 
the  families  with  easy  money  to  spend?  There  ain't  so 
many  of  them,  take  the  whole  bunch,  and  I  can  tell  you, 
so  far  as  I  know,  the  rich  want  to  get  somethin'  for  nothin' 
as  bad  as  the  little  fellers  —  I  don't  know  but  worse !  I 
guess  that's  why  they  get  rich." 

Thus  Ernestine  would  have  nothing  of  any  business  that 
catered  solely  to  the  rich  and  exclusive  classes.  A  sure 
democratic  and  business  instinct  made  her  rely  for  steady 
profits  upon  the  multitude,  who  "must  all  get  washed 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  349 

sometime/'   in  her  favorite  axiom,  and  as  cheaply  as  pos- 
sible. 

"You  never  take  any  of  my  ideas  seriously,"  Milly  com- 
plained after  this  rebuff. 

It  happened  to  be  a  stormy  winter's  evening  when  the 
Ideal  Laundry  had  been  up  for  discussion.  They  could 
hear  occasional  spats  of  snow  against  the  window-panes 
behind  the  long  red  curtains,  which  had  been  drawn.  A 
wood  fire  was  crumbling  into  glowing  coals  on  the  hearth. 
Virginia  had  long  since  gone  to  bed,  and  Sam  Reddon,  who 
had  dropped  in  for  dinner  in  the  absence  of  his  wife  from 
the  city,  had  left  after  an  evening  of  banter  and  chit-chat. 
...  At  Milly 's  despairing  exclamation,  Ernestine  squatted 
down  on  a  footstool  at  her  feet  and  looked  up  at  her  mate 
with  the  pained  expression  of  a  faithful  dog,  who  wants  to 
understand  his  Idol's  desires,  but  can't. 

" What's  the  matter  with  this,  dearie?"  she  grumbled, 
taking  one  of  Milly's  hands  in  her  powerful  grip.  "Can't 
you  be  satisfied  just  as  it  is?  Seems  to  me — "  and  she 
broke  off  to  look  around  the  cheerful  room  with  a  glance 
of  appreciation  —  "seems  to  me  we're  pretty  comfortable, 
we  three,  just  as  we  are,  without  worrying  'bout  making  a 
lot  more  money  and  trying  things  that  would  be  a  bother 
and  might  turn  out  badly  in  the  end." 

As  Milly's  face  still  gloomed,  unresponsive,  she  added 
contritely,  — 

"I  know  it's  small.     It  ain't  what  you  — " 

"Oh,  it  isn't  that!"  Milly  interrupted  hastily.  "You 
don't  understand,  Ernestine;  I  want  to  do  something  for 


350  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

myself  just  to  show  I  can.  I'm  so  useless  —  always  have 
been,  I  suppose.  .  .  .  Well."  She  rose  from  her  chair, 
disengaging  herself  from  the  Laundryman's  embrace,  and 
stood  musingly  with  one  foot  on  the  fender,  the  firelight 
playing  softly  over  the  silk  of  her  gown.  (The  favorite 
attitude,  by  the  way,  of  the  heroine  in  Jack's  illustrations 
of  Clive  Reinhard's  stories.) 

"You  ain't  one  mite  useless  to  me  /"  Ernestine  protested. 
(In  her  emotional  moments  she  lapsed  into  her  native 
idiom  in  spite  of  herself.) 

"  You're  kind,  Ernestine,"  Milly  replied  almost  coldly. 
"But  I  really  am  nearly  useless.  Can't  you  see  why  I 
want  to  do  something  for  myself  and  my  child,  as  you  have 
done  for  yourself?  And  not  be  always  a  dependent !" 

Ernestine  threw  herself  on  the  lounge,  looking  quite 
miserable.  The  worm  in  her  swelling  bud  of  happiness  had 
already  appeared. 

"I'm  content,"  she  sighed,  "just  as  it  is." 

"I'm  not !"   Milly  retorted,  rather  unfeelingly. 

"It  suits  me  to  a  T,  if  it  could  only  last." 

For  a  time  neither  added  anything  to  the  subject.  Milly, 
who  was  never  hard  for  more  than  a  few  moments,  went 
over  to  the  lounge  and  caressed  the  Laundryman's  face. 

"That  was  horrid  of  me,"  she  said.  "It's  going  to  last 
—  forever,  I  guess." 

But  in  spite  of  herself  she  could  not  keep  the  droop  from 
her  voice  at  this  statement  of  the  irrevocable,  and  Ernestine 
shook  her  head  sadly. 

"No,  it  ain't.     You'll  marry  again  sometime." 

"I'll  never  do  that !"   Milly  exclaimed  impatiently. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  351 

"I  s'pose  it  would  really  be  the  best  thing  for  you," 
Ernestine  admitted,  looking  at  Milly  thoughtfully.  Milly 
was  now  barely  thirty-four  and  more  seductive  as  a  woman 
than  ever  before.  Ernestine's  jealous  heart  could  under- 
stand why  men  would  desire  her  mate.  "And  this  time," 
she  continued  more  cheerfully,  "you'll  know  enough  to 
pick  a  good  provider." 

"Don't  talk  such  nonsense." 

Nevertheless  Milly  was  pleased  at  this  proof  that  she 
was  still  desirable,  merely  as  a  woman.  What  woman 
wouldn't  be?  Her  early  romantic  notion  that  second 
marriages  were  impure  had  completely  changed  since  the 
failure  of  her  marriage  with  Jack.  Now  she  had  merely  a 
feeling  of  disgust  with  the  married  state  in  general  and  with 
husbands  as  a  class. 

"They  ain't  all  bad,  I  expect,"  Ernestine  remarked  in  a 
spirit  of  fairness.  "There  must  be  exceptions  among  hus- 
bands the  same  as  in  everything  else  in  life." 

"I  don't  care  to  take  the  risk."' 

"But  I  expect  if  you'd  happened  to  marry  one  of  those 
others  who  wanted  you  to  you'd  felt  different.  You'd  be 
on  easy  street  to-day,  anyhow !  .  .  .  The  trouble  was,  my 
dear,  you  trusted  to  your  feelin'  too  much,  and  not  enough 
to  your  head." 

She  nodded  her  own  large  head  sagely. 

"Perhaps,"  Milly  agreed  vaguely.  .  .  .  "Well,  will  you 
shut  the  house  up?" 

Ernestine  went  downstairs  to  lock  the  doors  and  see 
that  the  lights  were  out  in  the  servants'  quarters. 


II 

AT  LAST,   THE   REAL   BIGHT   SCHEME 

WHENEVER  Eleanor  Kemp  came  to  New  York  —  which 
happened  usually  at  least  twice  a  year,  on  her  way  to  and 
from  Europe  —  she  always  endeavored  to  see  her  old  friend, 
if  for  only  a  few  minutes.  So  when  she  landed  this  spring, 
she  went  almost  immediately  from  her  hotel  to  number  236, 
and  Milly  found  her  waiting  in  the  little  reception  room  on 
her  return  from  her  marketing. 

"You  see  I  didn't  forget  the  number,  and  just  came 
over!"  Mrs.  Kemp  said  gayly.  "We  docked  at  ten,  and 
Walter  has  already  disappeared  to  see  some  pictures.  .  .  . 
How  are  you,  dear?" 

The  two  friends  had  kissed,  and  then  still  holding 
each  other  by  the  arms  drew  off  for  the  preliminary 
scrutiny.  Eleanor  Kemp's  black  hair  showed  gray  about 
the  temples,  and  there  were  lines  around  the  trembling 
mouth.  "  She's  getting  old,  really,"  Milly  thought  in  a  flash. 
"But  it  doesn't  make  so  much  difference  to  her,  they  are 
so  rich ! " 

"Milly,  you  are  prettier  than  ever  —  you  always  are 
when  I  see  you  —  how  do  you  keep  so  young?"  the  older 
woman  exclaimed  admiringly,  and  drew  Milly's  smiling 
face  closer  for  another  kiss.  "And  you  have  been  through 
so  much  since  I  saw  you  last  —  so  much  sadness." 

352 


ONE   WOMAN'S   LIFE  353 

"Yes,"  Milly  admitted  flatly. 

Somehow  she  did  not  want  to  talk  of  her  marriage  and 
Jack's  death  with  Eleanor  Kemp,  who  had  been  so  near 
her  during  the  ecstatic  inception  of  that  passion. 

"How  pretty  your  house  is!"  Eleanor  said,  divining 
Milly's  reluctance  to  intimacy.  "I've  been  peeking  into 
the  next  room  while  I  waited." 

"Yes,  it's  pleasant,"  Milly  replied  unenthusiastically. 
"It's  small  and  the  street  is  rather  noisy.  But  it  does  well 
enough.  You  know  it  isn't  my  house.  It  belongs  to  a 
friend,  —  Ernestine  Geyer." 

"Yes,  you  wrote  me." 

"She's  in  business,  away  all  day,  and  I  keep  house  for 
her,"  Milly  explained,  as  if  she  were  eager  not  to  have  her 
position  misunderstood. 

"It  must  be  much  pleasanter  for  you  and  Virginia  than 
being  alone." 

"Yes,"  Milly  agreed,  in  the  same  negative  voice,  and 
then  showed  her  friend  over  the  house,  which  Mrs.  Kemp 
pronounced  "sweet"  and  "cunning."  As  Milly's  manner 
remained  listless,  Eleanor  Kemp  suggested  their  lunching 
at  the  hotel,  and  they  walked  over  to  the  large  hostelry 
on  the  Avenue,  where  the  Kemps  usually  stayed  in  New 
York. 

Walter  Kemp  not  having  returned  from  his  picture  quest, 
the  women  had  luncheon  by  themselves  at  a  little  table 
near  a  window  in  the  ornate  dining-room  of  the  hotel.  Milly 
grew  more  cheerful  away  from  her  home.  It  always  light- 
ened her  mind  of  its  burdens  to  eat  in  a  public  place.  She 
liked  the  movement  about  her,  the  strange  faces,  the  un- 

2A 


354  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

accustomed  food,  and  her  opportunities  of  restaurant  life 
had  not  been  numerous  of  late.  It  was  pleasant  to  be 
again  with  her  old  friend  and  revive  their  common  memories 
of  Chicago  days.  They  discussed  half  the  people  they 
knew.  Milly  told  Eleanor  of  Vivie  Norton's  engagement 
finally  to  the  divorced  man  and  the  marriage,  "  a  week  after 
he  got  his  decree."  And  Eleanor  told  Milly  of  the  ap- 
proaching marriage  of  Nettie  Gilbert's  daughter  to  a  very 
attractive  youth,  etc. 

"You  must  come  to  visit  me  this  summer,"  she  declared. 
"Your  friends  are  all  dying  to  see  you." 

"Do  you  think  they  remember  me  still?" 

"Remember  you  !  My  dear,  they  still  talk  about  your 
engagement  to  Clarence  Parker." 

Milly  laughed  gayly. 

"That!"  ...  She  added  quite  unexpectedly,  "I  sup- 
pose I  ought  to  have  married  him  really." 

"Milly!" 

"Why  not?"  Milly  persisted  in  a  would-be  indifferent 
tone.  "Then  I  shouldn't  be  keeping  house  for  somebody 
else  for  my  living." 

Mrs.  Kemp  gave  her  a  quick  look,  and  then  turned  it  off 
with,  — 

"You  should  have  stayed  in  Chicago,  whatever  you  did. 
We  all  miss  you  so  !"  .  .  . 

In  her  glances  about  the  crowded  room  Milly's  eyes 
had  rested  upon  a  little  woman  seated  at  a  table  not  far 
away,  —  a  blond,  fluffy-haired,  much-dressed  and  much- 
jewelled  creature,  who  was  scrutinizing  the  long  menu  with 
close  attention. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  355 

"Do  you  know  who  she  is,  Nelly?"  Milly  asked,  indi- 
cating the  little  blond  person.  "It  seems  to  me  she's 
some  one  I  ought  to  know." 

Mrs.  Kemp  glanced  out  of  her  lowered  eyes ;  then  as  the 
other  looked  up  both  bowed.  She  said  in  a  whisper  to 
Milly,  - 

"You  ought  to  know  her,  Milly  !    She  was  Annie  Dove." 

"Who  is  she  now?" 

Eleanor  Kemp  paused  to  laugh  before  replying  and  then 
whispered,  — 

"She's  who  you  might  have  been  —  Mrs.  Clarence 
Parker!" 

"Oh!"  Milly  murmured  and  looked  again  with  more 
curiosity  at  the  fluffy-haired  little  woman.  "She  dresses  a 
good  deal,"  she  observed.  "I  wonder  how  Clarence  likes  to 
pay  the  bills." 

"We  saw  them  at  Wiesbaden  this  spring.  They  seemed 
quite  happy.  He  was  taking  the  cure." 

"Did  it  do  him  any  good?"  Milly  inquired  amiably.  .  .  . 

Presently  a  short,  bald-headed  man  took  the  place  op- 
posite their  neighbor,  and  Milly  examined  him  with  much 
care.  Clarence  Albert  was  balder  and  whiter  than  ever, 
and  his  cold  gray  eyes  were  now  concealed  by  glasses  which 
gave  him  the  look  of  an  eminent  financier.  His  wife  coached 
him  evidently  about  the  menu.  Milly  thought  she  could 
hear  his  squeaky  voice  saying,  "Well,  now,  I  don't  know 
about  that."  A  queer  little  smile  came  around  her  lips  as 
she  considered  that  she  might  have  occupied  the  seat  the 
richly  dressed,  bejewelled  little  lady  had,  and  be  listening 
at  that  moment  to  Clarence  Albert's  observations  on  the 


356  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

luncheon  menu.  Just  then  Parker  looked  over,  recognized 
Mrs.  Kemp,  and  hurried  across  with  outstretched  hand. 
He  did  not  see  Milly  until  he  reached  the  table,  and  then 
he  stopped  as  if  he  did  not  know  what  to  do  next.  Milly 
smiled  and  extended  a  hand. 

"  How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Parker  ! "  she  said  gayly.  "  Eleanor 
has  just  pointed  out  your  wife  to  me  —  such  a  pretty  woman  ! 
How  are  you?" 

"Very  well  now  Miss  —  Mrs.  —  " 

"Bragdon,"  Milly  supplied. 

"Very  well  indeed,  Mrs.  Bragdon,  and  I  see  you  are  the 
same." 

He  retreated  at  once,  and  Milly  glancing  roguishly  at 
Eleanor  Kemp  murmured,  — 

"I  take  it  back.  .  .  .  No,  I  couldn't!  Not  even  with 
all  the  clothes  and  jewels." 

"Of  course  you  couldn't !" 

"It's  fate  — it's  all  fate!"  Milly  sighed.  That  was  her 
way  of  saying  that  everything  in  this  world  depended  upon 
the  individual  soul,  and  she  couldn't  manage  her  soul  dif- 
ferently. She  felt  relieved. 

The  dessert  arriving  just  then,  Milly 's  attention  was  dis- 
tracted from  the  Clarence  Alberts  and  from  her  soul.  She 
took  much  time  and  care  in  selecting  a  piece  of  patisserie. 
French  pastry,  which  had  become  a  common  article  in  New 
York  hotels  by  that  time,  always  interested  Milly.  She 
liked  the  sweet,  seductive  cakes,  and  they  brought  back 
to  memory  happy  times  in  Paris  and  her  visits  to  Gage*'s 
with  Jack. 

"I  am  afraid  they  aren't  very  good,"  her  hostess  re- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  357 

marked,  observing  that  Milly  after  all  her  research  into  the 
dish  merely  tasted  her  cake  and  pushed  it  away.  "They 
don't  seem  able  to  make  the  nice  French  ones  over  here  — 
they're  usually  as  heavy  as  lead." 

"No,  they're  not  a  bit  like  those  we  used  to  get  at  Gage's. 
I  wonder  why  they  don't  find  somebody  who  can  make 
real  French  pastry.  .  .  .  Now  there's  an  idea!"  she  ex- 
claimed with  sudden  illumination.  "A  cake  shop  like 
Gage's  with  real  cakes  and  a  real  Madame  in  black  at  the 
desk!" 

She  gave  Eleanor  a  vivid  description  of  the  charms  of 
Gage*'s.  Her  friend  laughed  indulgently. 

"You  funny  child,  to  remember  that  all  this  time  !  " 

"But  why  not?"  Milly  persisted.  "Everybody  likes 
French  pastry.  I  believe  you  could  make  heaps  of  money 
from  a  good  cake  shop  in  America." 

"Well,  when  you  are  ready  to  open  your  cake  shop,  come 
to  Chicago  !  .  .  .  And  anyway  you  are  coming  to  visit 
me  next  month." 

Milly  readily  promised  to  make  the  visit  when  Virginia's 
school  closed,  and  shortly  afterwards  the  friends  parted. 

Milly  strolled  home  in  a  revery  of  Eleanor  Kemp,  who 
always  brought  back  her  past,  of  Clarence  Albert  and  Clar- 
ence Albert's  expensive  wife.  "If  I  had —  '  she  mused. 
If  somehow  she  had  done  differently  and  instead  of  being  a 
penniless  widow  she  were  happily  married  with  ample 
means ;  if  the  world  was  this  or  that  or  the  other !  .  .  . 
But  back  of  all  her  thoughts,  beneath  all  her  revery,  sim- 
mered the  idea  of  the  Cake  Shop.  In  telling  Ernestine  of 


358  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

her  day's  adventure,  however,  she  made  no  reference  to 
the  New  Idea.  This  time  she  would  not  expose  her  con- 
ception to  the  chilling  blast  of  the  Laundryman's  criticism 
until  she  had  perfected  it.  She  nursed  it  like  an  artist 
within  her  own  breast. 


Ill 

CHICAGO  AGAIN 

A  MONTH  later  Milly  and  Virginia  went  to  Chicago  to 
visit  the  Kemps.  Milly's  heart  leaped  as  the  miles  west- 
ward were  covered  by  the  rapid  train.  Old  friends,  she 
thought,  are  nearest,  warmest,  dearest  to  us,  and  again  and 
again  during  the  joyous  weeks  of  her  visit  to  the  bustling 
city  by  the  Lake,  Milly  felt  the  truth  of  this  platitude. 
Everybody  seemed  delighted  to  see  "Milly  Ridge/'  as  half 
the  people  she  met  still  called  her.  She  could  not  go  a 
block  without  some  more  or  less  familiar  figure  stopping, 
and  throwing  up  hands  exclaiming,  "Why,  Milly!  not 
you  —  I'm  so  glad."  And  they  stopped  to  talk,  obstructing 
traffic. 

Milly  was  conscious  of  being  at  her  very  best.  She  had 
decided  to  discard  her  mourning  altogether  on  going  back 
to  Chicago,  and  had  some  attractive  new  gowns  to  wear. 
Instead  of  a  forlorn  and  weary  widow,  she  presented  her- 
self to  her  Chicago  public  fresher  and  prettier  than  ever, 
beaming  with  delight  over  everything  and  very  much  alive. 
That  is  the  way  Chicago  likes. 

"Chicago  is  different/'  she  repeated  a  dozen  times  a  day, 
meaning  by  that  vague  comment  that  Chicago  was  more 
generous,  kindly,  hospitable,  warmer  and  bigger-hearted 
than  New  York.  Which  was  perfectly  true,  and  which 

359 


360  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Chicago  liked  to  hear  as  often  as  possible.  The  purely 
human  virtues  still  flourished  there,  it  seemed  to  Milly, 
in  their  primal  bloom,  while  they  had  become  somewhat 
faded  in  the  more  hectic  air  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard.  There 
was  a  feeling  of  frank  good-fellowship  and  an  optimistic 
belief  in  everybody  and  in  the  world  as  well  as  in  yourself 
that  was  spoken  of  as  the  Spirit  of  the  West.  "In  New 
York,"  Milly  said  to  Eleanor  Kemp,  "unless  you  make  a 
great  noise  all  the  time,  nobody  knows  you  are  there.  And 
when  you  fail,  it's  like  a  stone  dropped  into  the  ocean :  no- 
body knows  that  you  have  gone  under  !  I  want  to  live  the 
rest  of  my  life  in  Chicago,"  she  concluded  positively. 

"Yes,"  all  her  friends  assented  with  one  voice,  "you 
must  come  back  to  us  —  you  belong  here!"  (With  the 
future,  the  setting  sun,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.) 

And  they  laid  their  little  plans  to  entrap  her  and  hold 
her  in  their  midst  for  good,  —  obvious  plans  in  which  men, 
of  course,  were  designedly  included.  They  said  a  great 
many  nice  things  about  her  behind  her  back  as  well  as  to 
her  face. 

"Milly  has  shown  such  pluck.  .  .  .  Her  marriage  was 
unfortunate  —  he  left  her  without  a  cent.  .  .  .  And 
treated  her  quite  badly,  I  hear,"  etc.,  etc. 

Her  two  weeks'  visit  to  the  Kemps  stretched  to  a  month ; 
there  were  many  little  parties  and  engagements  made  for 
her,  and  then  she  went  to  several  suburban  places  to 
visit.  Unlike  other  American  cities  summer  is  almost  the 
liveliest  season  in  and  around  Chicago,  for  having  its  own 
refrigerating  plant  at  its  door  Chicago  prefers  to  stay  at 
home  during  the  hot  weather  and  take  its  vacation  in  the 


ONE   WOMAN'S   LIFE  361 

raw  spring.  So  Milly  found  life  very  full  and  gay.  And  she 
perceived  after  a  time  a  new  spirit  in  her  old  home,  —  the 
metropolitan  spirit,  which  was  funnily  self-conscious  and 
proud  of  itself.  "We  too,"  every  one  seemed  to  be  saying, 
"are  natives  of  no  mean  city."  Milly  heartily  approved 
of  this  spirit.  She  liked  to  think  and  to  say  that  after  all, 
in  spite  of  her  husband's  errancy,  Chicago  was  also  her 
city. 

So  she  had  the  best  of  times  the  ten  weeks  she  spent  in 
the  strong  young  metropolis,  and  saw  a  great  many  people 
new  and  old,  and  was  more  popular  than  ever.  She  was 
well  enough  aware  of  those  little  plans  kind  friends  were 
making  for  her,  matrimonially,  but  her  heart  seemed  dead 
to  all  men.  She  looked  at  them  critically,  and  her  heart 
gave  no  sign. 

"I'm  going  to  be  a  business  woman,"  she  announced  to 
the  Kemps  one  day. 

"Milly  in  business  !  What  do  you  think  of  that  now?" 
the  banker  responded  with  a  good-natured  laugh  that 
covered  the  jeer.  "What  next?" 

But  his  wife,  with  jealous  promptitude,  added,  — 

"Milly,  you  are  a  wonder  !" 

"Yes,"  Milly  affirmed  stoutly.     "Wait,  and  you  will  see." 

For  in  spite  of  all  the  good  times,  the  flattery,  and  the 
social  pleasures,  the  great  New  Idea  still  simmered  in  her 
head.  She  would  do  something  "unusual,"  and  "in  Chicago 
too,"  which  was  the  place  for  originality  and  venture,  — 
this  big-hearted,  hopeful  city  whose  breath  of  life  was 
business,  always  business,  and  where  people  believed  in 
one  another  and  looked  favorably  at  "the  new  thing." 


362  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

One  day  Milly  stepped  into  the  shop  of  the  smart  man- 
milliner,  where  in  her  opulent  maiden  days  she  had  got 
her  hats,  —  "just  to  see  what  Bamberg  has  this  season." 
After  chatting  with  the  amiable  proprietor,  who,  like  every 
one  who  had  dealings  with  Milly,  was  fond  of  her  (even  if 
she  did  not  pay  him  promptly),  Bamberg  called  to  one  of 
his  young  ladies  to  bring  Mrs.  Bragdon  a  certain  hat  he 
wished  her  to  try  on.  "One  of  my  last  Paris  things,"  he 
explained,  "an  absolutely  new  creation,"  and  he  whispered, 
"It  was  ordered  for  Mrs.  Pelham  —  the  young  one,  you 
know,  but  it  didn't  suit  her."  He  whispered  still  more  con- 
fidentially, "She  was  too  old  !" 

After  that  how  could  Milly  help  "just  trying  it  on"? 

The  girl  who  brought  the  hat  exclaimed  with  a  charming 
smile  and  a  decided  French  accent,  "  It  cannot  be  —  but 
it  is  —  it  is  Madame  Brag-donne!" 

"Jeanne  —  Jeanine!"  and  they  almost  embraced,  to  the 
scandal  of  Bamberg. 

It  was  one  of  the  girls  Milly  had  known  at  Gage's,  the 
chief  demoiselle  of  the  pastry  shop.  And  how  was  Madame 
Catteau,  the  patronne,  and  when  did  Jeanne  come  to 
America?  The  hat  was  forgotten  while  the  two  chattered 
half  in  French  and  half  in  English  about  Gage's,  Paris,  and 
Chicago.  .  .  . 

Of  course  Milly  bought  the  hat  in  the  end,  —  it  was 
such  a  "jewel"  and  became  her  as  if  "it  were  made  for 
Madame  Brag-donne,"  who,  Jeanne  averred,  was  really  more 
than  half  French.  (Bamberg  generously  cut  the  price  to 
"nothing,  —  $35,"  and  Milly  promised  to  "pay  when  I 
can,  you  know."  Which  perfectly  contented  the  man- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  363 

milliner.  "We  know  you,  Mrs.  Bragdon,"  he  said,  con- 
ducting her  himself  to  the  Kemps'  motor  in  which  she  had 
come.) 

The  negotiations  over  the  hat,  which  had  to  be  altered 
several  times,  gave  Milly  a  chance  to  confide  in  her  old 
friend  Jeanne  the  New  Idea.  A  Cake  Shop  —  a  real  Paris 
patisserie,  chic,  and  with  French  pastry,  here  in  this  Chicago  ! 
The  idea  thrilled  the  pretty  French  woman,  and  they  dis- 
cussed many  of  the  details.  "I  must  have  a  real  French 
pastry  cook,  and  girls,  Paris  girls  like  you,"  Milly  said  with 
sudden  inspiration,  "and  a  madame,  of  course,  and  the  little 
marble-topped  tables  and  all  the  rest"  as  nearly  as  pos- 
sible like  the  adorable  Gage*'s.  Jeanne  thought  that  it 
would  be  "furiously  successful."  There  would  be  nothing 
like  it  in  Chicago  or  anywhere  else  in  the  new  world,  where 
Madame  Brag-donne  would  admit  the  eating  was  not  all 
that  it  might  be  in  quality.  Oh,  yes,  it  was  a  brilliant 
idea  and  Jean  remembered  a  sister-in-law  who  would  make 
a  remarkable  dame  de  comptoir.  She  was  living  in  strict 
retirement  at  Grenoble,  the  fault  of  a  wretched  man  she 
had  been  feeble  enough  to  marry.  .  .  . 

Thus  by  the  time  the  hat  was  hers  Milly's  scheme  had 
taken  definite  form,  and  it  was  also  time  for  her  to  return 
to  New  York.  "But  I  shall  be  back  soon,'"  she  told  all  her 
friends  confidently,  with  a  mysterious  nod  of  her  pretty 
head. 

She  had  seen  Horatio,  of  course,  had  taken  Virginia  to 
spend  a  Sunday  with  her  unknown  grandfather  in  the 
little  Elm  Park  cottage.  Josephine  received  her  husband's. 


364  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

daughter  and  granddaughter  with  a  carefully  guarded  cor- 
diality, which  expanded  as  soon  as  she  saw  that  Milly  had 
nothing  to  ask  for.  Horatio  was  very  happy  over  the 
brief  visit.  He  was  an  old  man  now,  Milly  realized,  but  a 
chirping  and  contented  old  man,  who  still  went  faithfully 
every  working  day  in  the  year  to  his  humble  desk  in  Hop- 
pers' great  establishment,  on  Sundays  to  the  Second  Pres- 
byterian, and  in  season  watered  the  twenty-six  square  feet 
of  turf  before  his  front  door.  He  talked  a  great  deal  about 
Hoppers',  which  had  been  growing  with  astounding  rapidity, 
like  everything  in  Chicago,  and  now  covered  three  entire 
city  blocks.  That  and  the  church  and  Josephine  quite  filled 
all  the  corners  of  Horatio's  simple  being.  Milly  promised 
her  father  another,  longer  visit,  but  with  her  many  engage- 
ments could  not  "get  it  in."  Horatio  wrote  her  "a  beau- 
tiful letter"  and  sent  her  on  the  eve  of  her  departure  a  box 
of  flowers  from  his  own  garden. 

Milly  carried  the  flowers  back  to  New  York  with  her. 
She  had  much  to  think  over  on  that  brief  journey.  Life' 
seemed  larger,  much  larger,  than  it  had  ten  weeks  before, 
and  her  appetite  for  it  had  grown  wonderfully  keener  in  the 
Chicago  air.  That  was  the  virtue  of  the  West,  Milly  de- 
cided. It  put  vigor  and  hope  into  one.  She  also  felt  more 
mature  and  independent.  It  had  been  a  good  thing. for 
her  to  get  away  from  New  York,  out  from  under  Ernestine's 
protecting  wings,  which  closed  uncomfortably  tight  at 
times.  She  realized  now  that  "she  could  do  things  for 
herself,"  and  need  not  be  so  "dependent." 

That,  it  must  be  observed,  was  the  prevailing  desire  in 
Milly's  new  ambitions.     Like  all  poor  mortals  who  have 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  365 

not  either  triumphed  indubitably  in  the  world's  eyes  or 
sunk  irretrievably  into  the  mire,  she  hungered  for  some  definite 
self-accomplishment,  something  that  would  give  meaning 
and  dignity  to  her  own  little  life.  All  of  her  varied  experi- 
ence,—  all  the  phases  and  "ideas"  through  which  she  had 
lived  from  her  eager,  unconscious  girlhood  to  the  present, 
were  resolved  and  summed  up  in  this  at  last,  —  the  desire 
to  have  some  meaning  to  her  life,  some  dignity  of  purpose, 
—  no  longer  to  be  the  jetsam  on  the  stream  that  so  many 
women  are,  buffeted  by  storms  beyond  their  ken,  the  sport 
of  men  and  fate.  She  looked  at  her  little  daughter,  who 
was  absorbed  in  the  pictures  of  a  magazine,  and  said  to  her- 
self that  she  was  doing  it  all  for  her  child,  more  than  for  her- 
self. Virginia  must  have  a  very  different  kind  of  life  from 
hers !  Parentlike  she  yearned  to  graft  upon  the  young 
tree  the  heavy  branch  of  her  own  worldly  experience.  And 
perhaps  Milly  realized,  also,  that  the  world  into  which  little 
Virginia  was  rapidly  growing  would  be  a  very  different 
sort  of  place  —  especially  for  women  —  from  the  one  in 
which  Milly  Ridge  had  fluttered  about  with  untutored  in- 
stincts and  a  dominating  determination  "to  have  a  good 
time."  .  .  . 

Tired  at  last  with  so  much  meditation,  Milly  bought  a 
novel  from  the  newsboy,  —  "Clive  Reinhard's  Latest  and 
Best "  —  A  Woman's  Will,  and  buried  herself  in  its  pages. 


IV 

GOING   INTO   BUSINESS 

"ERNESTINE,"  Milly  announced  gravely  that  first  night 
after  Virginia  was  tucked  in  bed,  "I've  something  important 
to  say  to  you." 

"What  is  it,  dearie?"   Ernestine  inquired  apprehensively. 

The  Laundryman  had  taken  a  half  holiday  to  welcome 
her  family  home  after  their  prolonged  vacation.  She  and 
the  old  colored  cook  —  a  great  admirer  of  Milly's  —  had 
decorated  the  dining-room  with  wild  flowers  and  contrived 
a  birthday  cake  with  eight  candles  for  Virginia,  who  had 
celebrated  her  nativity  a  few  days  previously.  Ernestine 
had  also  indulged  in  a  quart  of  champagne,  a  wine  of  which 
Milly  was  very  fond.  But  like  poor  Ernestine,  in  whom 
thrift  usually  fought  a  losing  battle  with  generosity,  she 
had  compromised  upon  a  native  brand  that  the  dealer  had 
said  was  "just  as  good  as  the  imported  kind,"  but  which 
Milly  had  tasted  and  left  undrunk.  .  .  .  She  had  also 
put  on  her  best  dress,  a  much  grander  affair  of  black  silk 
than  the  rose-pink  negligee,  which  Milly  had  compelled  her 
to  bestow  upon  Amelia.  And  she  had  lighted  the  fire  in 
the  living-room  and  all  the  wax  candles,  though  it  was  still 
warm  outdoors  and  they  had  to  open  the  street  windows 
and  endure  the  thunder  of  the  traffic. 

Milly,  although  she  had  received  all  Ernestine's  efforts 

366 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  367 

graciously,  had  been  wearied  by  the  noise,  —  the  fierce 
song  of  New  York,  —  and  had  been  serious  and  non-com- 
municative since  her  arrival.  Virginia,  however,  had  been 
eloquently  happy  to  return  to  her  own  home,  her  own 
things,  her  own  bed,  and  her  own  Amelia  and  Ernestine, 
which  had  somewhat  made  up  to  the  Laundryman  for 
Milly's  indifference. 

Now  Milly  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  looking 
straight  before  her,  but  seeing  nothing.  Ernestine,  with 
hands  clasped  around  her  knees,  sat  in  a  low  chair  and  anx- 
iously watched  her  friend,  — 

"Well,  what  is  it?"  she  demanded,  as  Milly's  silence 
continued  after  her  first  announcement.  Milly  turned  and 
looked  at  Ernestine,  then  said  slowly,  — 

"I'm  going  into  business  —  in  Chicago." 

Ernestine  gave  a  little  gasp,  of  relief. 

"What  is  it  this  time?"   she  asked. 

Then  Milly  explained  her  project  at  great  length,  grow- 
ing more  eloquent  as  she  got  deeper  into  the  details  of  her 
conception,  painting  glowingly  the  opportunities  of  pro- 
viding hungry  Chicagoans  with  toothsome  delicacies,  and 
exhibiting  a  much  more  practical  notion  of  the  scheme  than 
she  had  had  of  her  other  ideas. 

"  Chicago  is  the  place,"  she  asserted  with  conviction. 
"I'm  known  there,  for  one  thing,"  she  added  with  a  touch 
of  pride.  "And  it  is  the  natural  home  of  enterprise.  They 
do  things  out  there,  instead  of  talking  about  them.  You 
ought  to  know  Chicago,  Ernestine  —  I'm  sure  you'd  like 
it." 

The  Laundryman  asked  in  a  dull  tone :  — 


368  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

"Where'll  you  get  the  money  to  start  your  cake  shop? 
For  it  will  take  money,  a  sight  of  money,  to  do  all  those 
things  you  talk  about." 

Milly  hesitated  a  moment  before  this  question. 

"I  don't  know  yet,"  she  said  thoughtfully,  "but  I  think 
I  shan't  have  much  trouble  in  getting  what  capital  I  need. 
I  have  friends  in  Chicago,  who  promised  to  help  me." 

(It  was  perfectly  true  that  Walter  Kemp  had  said  half 
jestingly  to  Milly  when  he  last  saw  her,  —  "When  you  get 
ready  to  go  into  business,  Milly,  you  must  let  me  be  your 
banker!") 

"But,"  Milly  continued  meaningly,  "I  wanted  to  talk 
it  over  with  you  first.  That's  why  I  came  back  now." 

Ernestine  went  over  and  closed  the  windows.  It  was  a 
crisis.  She  recognized  it,  indeed  she  had  felt  it  coming  for 
a  long  time.  She  would  have  to  choose  some  day  between 
Milly  and  her  own  life  —  the  laundry  business  —  and  the 
day  had  come. 

"Will  you  go  hi  with  me,  Ernestine?"  Milly  asked  di- 
rectly. .  .  . 

They  talked  far  into  the  night  until  the  traffic  had  died 
to  a  distant  rumble.  Probably  in  any  case  Ernestine  would 
have  yielded  to  Milly's  desires.  Her  heart  was  too  deeply 
involved  with  Milly  and  Virginia — " her  family"  —  for 
her  to  allow  them  to  take  themselves  out  of  her  life,  as  she 
saw  that  this  time  Milly  would  do  should  she  refuse  to  share 
in  the  new  move.  And  as  it  happened  the  choice  came 
when  a  crisis  in  her  own  business  was  on  the  way.  The  two 
young  men  who  owned  all  but  a  few  shares  of  the  Twentieth 
Century  Laundry  stock  had  been  bitten  by  the  trustifying 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  369 

germ  and  had  agreed  to  go  into  a  "laundry  combine "  with 
several  other  large  laundries.  It  was  one  thing,  Ernestine 
realized,  to  be  the  practical  boss  of  a  small  business,  and 
quite  another  to  be  a  subordinate  in  a  large  stock-gambling 
venture  with  an  unknown  crew  of  masters. 

This  complication  had  come  up  in  definite  form  since  Milly's 
departure,  and  Ernestine,  after  much  consideration,  had  al- 
ready resolved  to  sell  to  the  new  company  the  few  shares 
she  owned  in  the  Twentieth  Century  Laundry,  and  look 
about  for  another  opening  in  the  business  she  knew.  But  she 
hesitated  with  a  woman's  timidity  before  embarking  alone 
in  a  small  independent  business.  She  did  not  want  the  re- 
sponsibility of  being  the  head  of  a  business,  especially  in  these 
days  when,  as  she  was  well  aware,  the  little  pots  usually  get 
smashed  by  the  big  kettles  in  the  stream. 

So  Milly's  scheme  happened  to  come  at  the  right  moment. 
As  far  as  the  move  to  Chicago  was  concerned,  Ernestine 
rather  welcomed  the  change :  hers  had  been  a  monotonous 
treadmill  in  one  environment.  She  was  ready  for  a  venture 
in  a  new  city,  and  curious  about  Chicago,  of  which  Milly  had 
talked  a  great  deal.  But  above  all,  the  conclusive  reason 
for  her  consent  was  Milly  —  her  affections.  She  could  not 
lose  her  family,  cost  what  it  might  to  keep  them.  She  had 
no  clear  idea  of  Milly's  soaring  ambition  to  transplant  a 
French  patisserie  to  the  alien  soil  of  Chicago.  A  cake  shop, 
Ernestine  supposed,  was  some  sort  of  retail  food  business 
like  a  bakeshop  or  delicatessen  stand,  and  cake  seemed  to 
her  almost  as  elementally  necessary  to  mankind  as  washing 
or  liquor.  But  even  if  the  venture  failed  and  took  with  it 
all  her  savings  from  industrious  years  of  toil,  she  would  do 

2B 


370  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

it  "like  a  sport,"  as  Sam  Reddon  had  called  her,  and  when 
the  time  came,  face  life  anew.  .  .  . 

"I'll  go,  Milly!"  she  said  at  the  end,  with  a  thump  of 
her  fist  on  her  knee.  "And  I'll  put  my  own  money  into  the 
thing.  With  what  my  stock  will  bring  and  the  cash  in  the 
bank,  I'll  have  pretty  nearly  ten  thousand  dollars.  That 
ought  to  be  enough  to  start  a  cake  shop,  I  should  think. 
You  won't  have  to  go  to  any  of  your  rich  friends  for  help." 

Milly  thought  so,  too,  and  was  surprised  at  the  amount  of 
Ernestine's  savings.  She  felt  relieved  not  to  have  to  go  to 
the  Kemps  for  money  and  genuinely  delighted  to  have  Er- 
nestine a  partner  in  her  venture. 

"Now  we  must  start  at  once  !"  she  said  gayly.  "Mustn't 
lose  a  day,  so  that  we  can  open  before  the  fall  season  is  over." 

She  went  to  bed  very  happy  and  very  confident.  Ernes- 
tine, if  less  confident,  had  sufficient  self-reliance  not  to  worry 
about  the  future.  Thanks  to  her  eighteen  years  of  success- 
ful self-support,  she  knew  that  she  could  meet  life  anywhere 
any  time,  and  get  the  best  of  it. 

From  the  very  next  day  there  began  for  Milly  the  most 
active  and  the  happiest  period  of  her  existence.  They 
packed  hurriedly,  and  moved  to  Chicago,  Milly  going  on 
ahead  to  engage  a  house  where  they  could  live  and  also  have 
their  cakes  baked.  With  Eleanor's  Kemp's  advice  Milly 
wisely  selected  a  large,  old-fashioned  brick  house  on  the 
south  side,  not  far  from  the  business  district.  Once  the 
handsome  residence  of  a  prosperous  merchant,  it  had  been 
abandoned  in  the  movement  outward  from  the  crowded 
city  and  was  surrounded  by  lofty  office  buildings  and  auto- 
mobile shops.  Its  large  rooms  were  cool  and  comfortable, 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  371 

and  the  heavy  cornices  and  woodwork  gave  an  air  of  stately 
substantiality  to  the  old  house  that  pleased  Milly. 

When  Ernestine  arrived  the  two  partners  went  hunting 
for  a  suitable  shop.  Milly  wanted  a  location  in  the  very 
centre  of  the  fashionable  retail  district  on  the  avenue,  some- 
where between  the  Institute  and  the  Auditorium,  the  two 
most  stable  landmarks  hi  the  city.  But  the  rents,  even  at 
that  time,  were  prohibitive,  and  they  found  they  must  content 
themselves  with  one  of  the  cross  streets.  There  at  last  they 
found  a  grimy  little  old  building  tucked  in,  as  if  forgotten, 
between  two  more  modern  structures,  which  could  be  had 
entire  for  a  rental  that  they  might  (with  a  burst  of  courage) 
contemplate.  It  was  only  a  few  steps  from  the  great  north 
and  south  thoroughfare  and  within  the  woman's  zone. 
Ernestine,  indeed,  was  for  going  farther  away  after  some- 
thing more  modest  in  rental,  so  that  they  should  not  have 
to  sink  so  much  of  their  capital  at  the  start.  But  Milly 
argued  cogently  that  for  the  special  clientele  which  they 
wished  to  attract  they  must  be  hi  the  quarter  such  people 
frequented,  near  the  haberdashers  and  milliners  and  beauty 
parlors,  and  Ernestine  yielded  the  point  because  she  did 
not  know  about  cake  shops.  When  they  came  to  the  busi- 
ness of  the  lease,  the  good  services  of  Walter  Kemp  were 
enlisted.  After  he  had  met  Ernestine  in  the  course  of  the 
negotiations  with  the  agent  of  the  property,  he  reported 
more  hopefully  to  his  wife  of  Milly's  new  undertaking. 

"Anyway,  she's  got  a  good  partner,"  he  declared.  "The 
Geyer  woman  is  not  much  on  looks,  but  she's  solid  —  and 
if  I'm  not  mistaken,  she  knows  her  business." 

In  this  last  the  banker  was  mistaken.     Ernestine  was 


372  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

being  carried  along  passively  in  the  whirl  of  Milly's  enter- 
prise and  hardly  knew  what  she  was  about,  it  was  all  so  un- 
familiar ;  but  she  kept  her  mouth  shut  and  her  eyes  open  and 
was  learning  all  the  time.  She  had  already  found  out  that 
their  cake  shop  was  not  to  be  a  plebeian  provision  business,  but 
an  affair  of  fashion  and  taste  —  or,  as  she  called  it,  —  for  the 
"swells,"  and  had  her  first  instinctive  misgivings  on  that 
score.  And  that  ten  thousand  dollars,  which  had  seemed 
to  her  a  substantial  sum,  she  saw  would  look  very  small 
indeed  by  the  time  the  doors  of  their  shop  were  opened  to 
"  trade."  But  Milly's  spirits  were  never  higher  :  she  sparkled 
with  confidence  and  ideas.  On  the  signing  of  the  lease,  which 
Walter  Kemp  guaranteed,  they  had  a  very  jolly  luncheon 
at  the  large  hotel  near  by. 

As  soon  as  the  lease  had  been  signed  Milly  telegraphed  — 
she  never  wrote  letters  any  more,  it  was  so  much  more  busi- 
nesslike to  telegraph  —  to  Sam  Reddon  to  come  on  at  once 
and  superintend  the  rehabilitation  of  the  premises.  Ernes- 
tine would  have  intrusted  this  important  detail  to  a  scrub 
woman,  and  the  agent's  Chicago  decorator,  but  Milly  said 
promptly,  —  "That  would  spoil  everything!" 

Reddon  responded  to  "Milly's  Macedonian  cry,"  as  he 
described  her  telegram,  with  an  admirable  promptness, 
arriving  the  next  day  "with  one  clean  shirt  and  no  collars," 
he  confessed.  Milly  took  him  at  once  to  the  dingy  shop. 

"Now,  Sam,"  she  said  to  him  in  her  persuasive  way,  "I 
want  you  to  make  this  into  the  nicest  little  patisserie  you 
ever  saw  in  Paris.  Vrai  chic,  you  know!" 

"Some  stunt,"  he  replied,  looking  at  the  grimy  squalor 
of  the  abandoned  shop,  with  its  ugly  plate-glass  windows 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  373 

and  forbidding  walls.  "  Don't  you  want  me  to  get  you  a 
frieze  for  those  bare  walls  —  some  Chicago  nymphs  taking 
a  bath  in  the  Lake  with  a  company  of  leading  citizens  ob- 
serving them  from  the  steps  of  the  Art  Institute,  in  the  man- 
ner of  the  sainted  Puvis?" 

" Don't  be  silly,  Sam  !"  Milly  replied  in  reproof.  "This 
is  business." 

And  Sam  put  it  through  for  her.  They  had  a  good  time 
over  the  transformation  of  the  Chicago  shop  to  something 
"elegant  and  spirituelle, "  as  Sam  called  it.  He  entered 
into  the  spirit  of  the  thing,  as  Milly  knew  he  would, 
and  turned  out  a  creditable  imitation  of  a  Paris  shop,  with 
stucco  marbles,  black  woodwork,  and  glass  everywhere,  even 
to  red  plush  sofas  along  the  walls  and  a  row  of  little  tables 
and  chairs  in  front.  It  had  a  very  gay  appearance  — 
"distinguished"  in  its  sombre  setting.  "No  one  could  help 
walking  in  to  buy  a  cake,  could  they?"  Sam  appealed  to 
Ernestine. 

"Hope  they'll  have  the  price  for  more  than  one,"  the 
former  Laundryman  observed. 

"Oh,  you'll  do  a  big  business,"  Sam  rejoined  encourag- 
ingly. "Mostly  on  tick,  if  Milly  runs  the  cash  drawer." 

"She  won't!"  Ernestine  retorted. 

The  last  touch  was  the  sign,  —  a  long,  thin  black  board 
on  which  was  traced  in  a  delicate  gilt  script,  —  The  Cake 
Shop  —  Madame  Millemine.  The  firm  name  was  Sam's 
personal  contribution  to  the  business.  "You  must  have  a 
suitable  name,  and  who  ever  heard  of  a  Bragdon  or  a  Geyer 
keeping  a  cake  shop?  There  are  proprieties  in  all  these 
things." 


374  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

But  long  before  the  sign  was  in  place,  Milly  had  sailed 
away  from  New  York  for  Paris.  It  had  been  discovered 
that  a  good  French  pastry  cook  was  not  to  be  found  in 
Chicago.  A  few  were  said  to  exist  hi  America,  chiefly  in 
New  York  hotels,  but  their  handiwork  was  not  up  to  Milly's 
standard  and  their  demands  for  wages  were  exorbitant.  Also 
real  chic  French  dames  des  comptoirs  were  exceedingly  rare. 
Jeanne's  Grenoble  sister-in-law  proved  to  be,  in  Reddon's 
words,  —  "so  infernally  homely  that  she  would  scare  the 
customers  from  the  door."  So  it  was  agreed  that  while 
Ernestine  attended  to  the  numerous  details  of  the  prepara- 
tions in  Chicago,  Milly  should  make  a  hurried  trip  abroad 
consult  with  her  friend,  Madame  Catteau,  and  secure 
among  other  things  a  competent  pastry-cook  and  a  few 
good-looking  girls  for  waitresses. 

Milly  enjoyed  her  trip  immensely.  She  had  an  air  of 
importance  about  her  that  Sam  Reddon  described  as  "dip- 
lomatic." She  was  a  woman  of  affairs  now  —  large  affairs 
and  getting  larger  all  the  time.  She  spent  two  rapturous 
weeks,  so  breathlessly  absorbed  in  consulting  with  Madame 
Catteau  (who  was  ravished  by  Milly's  scheme  and  deplored 
almost  tearfully  her  fate  in  having  a  husband  and  two  chil- 
dren to  keep  her  from  returning  with  Madame  Brag-donne) 
and  in  interviewing  men  cooks  and  young  Frenchwomen, 
that  she  had  no  time  for  memories  or  sentimental  griefs  of 
any  sort.  Once,  flitting  through  the  rue  Gallile*e  in  a  cab, 
she  saw  the  hotel-pension  where  she  and  Jack  had  spent 
their  first  winter,  and  she  conjured  up  a  vivid  picture  of  the 
chilly  salon,  the  table  of  elderly  English  women,  and  the 
long,  dull  hours  in  her  close,  back  room.  How  long  ago 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  375 

all  that  was,  and  how  young  and  stupid  she  had  been  then! 
She  felt  very  much  more  alive  now,  an  altogether  new 
person,  with  her  business  on  her  hands,  —  but  not  old,  oh, 
not  that !  .  .  . 

An  ideal  man  pastry-cook  was  finally  engaged,  one  highly 
recommended  by  Madame  Catteau  as  vrai  Parisien,  skilful 
in  every  sort  of  pastry,  and  also  three  young  women  were 
induced,  for  love  of  Madame  Brag-donne,  to  try  their  fortune 
in  the  great  city  of  Chicago.  Also,  Milly  bought  quan- 
tities of  bonbons,  liquors,  sirops,  and  other  specialities  of 
the  business,  which  she  knew  could  not  be  had  "  really,  truly 
French"  in  America.  With  a  feeling  of  having  accom- 
plished much,  Milly  gathered  her  flock  and  set  sail  from 
Havre  on  the  French  steamer.  M.  Paul  —  the  pastry-cook 
-^  insisted  on  having  a  first-class  passage,  and  would  converse 
with  Milly  whenever  he  found  her  on  deck.  The  girls  were 
sick  in  the  second  cabin.  Milly  was  indulgent  with  them  all 
by  sympathy  as  well  as  by  policy,  but  she  was  glad  to  see 
Sandy  Hook.  She  decided  that  the  French  temperament 
needed  occupation,  and  she  hustled  her  conscripts  across  the 
city  and  into  the  Chicago  train  without  an  hour's  delay. 

Ernestine,  Virginia,  and  Sam  Reddon  met  the  party  at  the 
Chicago  station  and  escorted  the  exclamatory  laborers  to 
their  new  home  on  the  upper  floor  of  the  old  mansion.  Then 
Milly  and  Sam  went  to  see  the  Cake  Shop,  which  was  now 
ready  for  its  sweet  merchandise.  Milly,  though  she  was 
fresh  from  Paris,  was  much  pleased  with  Sam's  results,  and 
praised  him  warmly. 

"It's  cost  an  awful  sight  of  money,"  Ernestine  observed 
lugubriously. 


376  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

Milly  waved  one  hand  negligently.  Ernestine  was  almost 
as  bad  as  Grandma  had  been.  Would  she  never  rise  to  the 
conception  of  modern  business  ?  It  was  not  the  outgo  that 
counted,  but  the  receipts.  Milly  knew  that  already. 

"I'll  do  you  a  better  one  next  time/'  Sam  promised, 
"when  you  open  your  first  succursale,  Milly." 

"That  will  be  next  autumn  —  in  New  York,"  Milly  an- 
nounced. 

"My  stars  !"  said  Ernestine. 


MILLY'S  SECOND  TRIUMPH 

THEY  opened  the  Cake  Shop  just  before  the  holidays,  with 
a  great  party.  Milly  was  positive  that  was  the  right  pro- 
cedure, though  Ernestine  could  see  no  point  to  giving  away 
so  much  "trade."  Nearly  a  thousand  finely  engraved  cards 
were  sent  out  to  Milly's  friends,  the  friends  of  Milly's  friends, 
and  their  friends  and  acquaintances,  to  meet  "Mrs.  John 
Bragdon  and  Miss  Ernestine  Geyer  at  the  Cake  Shop  on 
Saturday,  December  the  fifteenth,  from  two  until  eight 
o'clock."  (Ernestine,  to  be  sure,  could  not  be  "met,"  be- 
cause she  was  in  the  cellar  most  of  the  time  attending  to 
many  essential  details  of  the  occasion.  But  Milly  was  there 
in  the  shop  above,  prettily  gowned  in  a  costume  she  had 
managed  to  capture,  incidentally,  on  her  flying  visit  to  the 
French  capital.) 

It  was  a  tremendous,  resounding,  thrilling  success ! 
Nearly  everybody  out  of  the  thousand  must  have  come, 
they  reckoned  afterwards,  and  several  more  besides  who 
knew  they  had  not  been  intentionally  omitted  from  the 
list  of  the  invited.  The  guests  began  coming  shortly  after 
the  doors  were  thrown  open  (by  a  small  colored  boy,  habited 
in  Turkish  costume),  and  no  sooner  did  any  tear  themselves 
away  from  the  shop  than  twice  as  many  squeezed  their  way 
in  somehow.  At  first  the  pretty  French  girls  in  silk  aprons 
and  coquettish  caps  tried  to  execute  the  orders,  but  soon 

377 


378  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

their  trays  were  seized  by  enthusiastic  young  men  and  the 
waitresses  took  refuge  behind  the  marble  table  beside  the 
Madame  and  helped  to  hand  out  the  tempting  cakes  and 
bonbons  and  sorbets  and  sirops  and  liqueurs.  Even  Milly 
pulled  off  her  long  white  gloves,  got  in  line  with  her  employees, 
and  tried  to  appease  her  hungry  guests.  As  a  final  touch  a 
dainty,  gold-printed  souvenir  menu,  with  the  list  of  deli- 
cacies to  be  had  at  the  Cake  Shop,  was  handed  to  every 
comer,  as  long  as  they  lasted. 

There  was  one  long  glad  chorus  of  praise  for  the  Cake  Shop 
and  everything  it  contained,  from  the  mirrors,  the  fetching 
decoration,  the  tables,  the  cakes  (such  as  never  had  been 
dreamed  of)  to  the  pretty  girls,  who  were  surrounded  always 
by  a  cluster  of  men,  trying  with  their  Chicago  French  to 
get  attention.  .  .  .  And  Milly,  of  course,  was  the  heroine 
of  the  occasion.  Her  health  was  drunk,  and  she  had  to  get 
on  a  chair  to  make  a  little  speech  of  thanks  and  invitation 
to  the  Cake  Shop  as  a  new  Chicago  Institution. 

Many  of  the  women  who  came  knew  their  Paris  better 
than  New  York,  and  "adored"  "this  chic  little  place."  It 
recalled  to  them  all  most  delightful  moments.  And  even 
in  Paris  they  had  never  eaten  anything  so  delicious  as 
M.  Paul's  cakes.  Henceforth  they  should  buy  all  their  des- 
serts of  "Madame  Millernine,"  and  there  was  a  spatter  of 
French  phrases  all  over  the  place. 

"It  was  a  wonder  !"  they  declared,  "this  idea  of  creating 
a  little  of  Paris  here  in  old  Chicago.  A  touch  of  genius 
really  —  just  like  that  astonishing  Milly  Ridge  to  have 
thought  of  the  one  thing  —  and  the  cakes  were  so  good,"  etc., 
etc. 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  379 

Milly's  ears  burned  with  the  winged  words,  and  she  smiled 
all  the  time.  If  Ernestine  only  could  hear  this,  it  would 
cure  her  of  doubting.  She  should  hear  !  Milly  felt  that  at 
last  she  had  demonstrated  herself.  It  was  like  that  other 
occasion  so  many,  many  years  ago,  when  she  had  surmounted 
all  the  difficulties  and  entertained  her  friends  at  "tea." 
Then  her  triumph  had  been  indubitable.  But  this  time  it 
was  more  significant,  for  the  affair  was  less  childish  :  it  meant 
money,  Milly  was  sure,  —  much  money.  So  every  one  said. 

At  eight  Milly  was  rescued  by  a  party  of  friends  and  borne 
to  a  hotel  in  triumph  for  a  dinner  which  lasted  long  after  mid- 
night. Her  health  was  drunk  again  in  real  champagne; 
speeches  were  made  to  impromptu  toasts  of  "The  New 
Woman  in  Business  —  God  Bless  Her."  "  The  Poetry  of  the 
Palate,"  "The  Creative  Cake,"  etc.  ...  At  ten  Ernestine 
and  her  aides,  having  succeeded  in  gathering  the  de*bris  and 
straightening  out  the  place  for  the  public  opening  the  next 
morning,  went  wearily  home  to  bed.  She  was  told  that  it  had 
been  a  great  success ;  she  hoped  that  the  enthusiasm  would 
last;  but  all  these  people  had  eaten  "a  mighty  sight  of  ex- 
pensive stuff"  without  paying  for  it,  which  seemed  to  the 
prosaic  Ernestine  "bad  business." 

But  Milly  knew.  She  was  right.  Those  cakes  cast  upon 
the  waters  of  fashionable  Chicago  brought  in  a  hundredfold 
return.  The  indulgent  newspapers,  always  patriotically 
loud  over  local  enterprise,  noted  the  opening  of  the  Cake 
Shop  as  a  minor  social  event  and  so  in  the  succeeding 
days  all  those  who  hadn't  been  invited  and  couldn't  talk 
French  with  the  waitresses  crowded  into  the  store.  It  was 


380  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

a  Novelty,  —  the  New  Thing,  —  and  became  overnight  a 
popular  fad.  M.  Paul  was  hard  pressed  to  turn  off  enough  of 
his  delectable  tid-bits — they  had  to  employ  assistants  for  him 
almost  at  once,  and  one  may  suspect  that  the  fairylike  melt- 
in-the-mouth  quality  of  his  best  work  began  to  deteriorate 
from  the  second  day.  He  had  never  baked  cakes  on  this 
wholesale  scale.  Did  these  gluttonous  barbarians  devour 
them  by  the  platterful?  .  .  .  Telephone  orders  were  nu- 
merous, and  Ernestine  must  organize  an  efficient  delivery 
system,  in  which  she  was  at  home.  Milly  spent  her  days 
at  the  shop,  where  it  became  the  fashion  for  men  as  well  as 
women  to  drop  in  late  in  the  afternoon,  to  eat  a  cake  or  six 
and  chat  with  one's  friends,  to  sip  an  anisette  or  grenadine, 
and  maybe  carry  away  a  bagful  of  cakes  for  the  little  ones 
at  home  or  to  eke  out  Mary's  thick-crusted  New  England 
pie. 

So  it  was  a  Success !  Milly  and  Ernestine  worked  like 
willing  galley-slaves,  getting  things  to  run  smoothly,  fitting 
into  all  the  corners  that  their  excitable  French  assistants 
created  daily.  Milly  was  one  broad  beam  these  days,  and 
went  happily  to  bed  so  tired  that  she  was  asleep  before  she 
touched  her  pillow.  Even  Ernestine's  heavy  brows  relaxed 
their  tension,  for  the  " queer"  business  seemed  to  be  making 
good  beyond  her  expectations.  Milly  had  been  right.  They 
charged  outrageous  prices  for  their  delicacies,  which  scandal- 
ized Ernestine,  who  could  not  believe  that  people  would  be 
foolish  enough  to  pay  twice  and  three  times  what  things  were 
worth.  But  Milly  insisted.  " The  people  we  are  after,"  she 
said,  "  like  it  all  the  better  the  more  they  have  to  pay."  And 
to  Ernestine's  astonishment  she  seemed  to  be  right  again, 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  ;    381 

for  the  present.  That,  Ernestine  concluded,  must  be  another 
freak  of  this  "rich  trade" ;  the  "swells"  expected  to  be  done 
and  would  be  disdainful  if  they  weren't.  Ernestine  had  a 
good  deal  of  contempt  for  their  patrons.  But  the  glowing 
proof  of  their  business  success  lay  in  the  cash  drawer,  which 
literally  overflowed  with  money,  and  they  had  accounts 
with  half  the  families  in  Chicago  wno  pretended  to  be  "in 
society." 

Business  men  began  to  compliment  Milly  upon  her  shrewd- 
ness and  predicted  a  marvellous  growth  for  the  business. 
One  broker  seriously  suggested  incorporating  the  Cake  Shop, 
as  certain  candy  manufacturers  had  incorporated,  and  of- 
fered to  boom  the  stock  on  the  local  exchange.  Milly  talked 
of  opening  a  summer  branch  in  Newport  or  Bar  Harbor,  she 
could  not  decide  which.  But  she  was  a  little  timid  about 
the  east.  She  felt  that  she  had  been  right  in  starting  in 
Chicago.  The  west  was  less  accustomed  to  Paris  and  had 
a  lustier  appetite  for  cake  than  New  York,  and  the  charm  of 
their  Gallic  interior  was  more  of  a  novelty  beside  Lake 
Michigan  than  it  would  be  on  Fifth  Avenue.  A  branch  in 
St.  Louis  or  Omaha  might  pay :  her  mind  was  nimble  with 
schemes.  .  .  .  She  was  also  going  out  more  or  less  all  the 
time,  to  dinners  and  theatre  parties,  which  with  her  long  day's 
work  took  every  ounce  of  her  strength  and  more.  Virginia 
had  to  get  along  these  days  the  best  she  could.  But  was  her 
mother  not  building  up  a  fortune  for  her  future? 

Of  course  they  had  their  troubles  from  the  very  start. 
M.  Paul's  Parisian  morals,  it  was  quickly  found,  could  not 
be  domesticated  in  a  Chicago  home,  and  quarters  had  to  be 


382  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

found  for  him  outside  the  house.  Then  the  prettiest  of  the 
girls  suddenly  disappeared,  much  to  Milly's  grief  and  anx- 
iety. The  men  had  been  specially  attentive  to  Lulu,  and  it 
was  found  that  she  had  taken  a  trip  to  the  Pacific  Coast  with 
a  young  broker.  Then  in  the  midst  of  their  harvest  the 
receipts  began  to  fall  mysteriously,  and  Ernestine  discovered 
an  unauthorized  trail  from  the  cash  drawer  to  the  large 
pocket  of  their  dame  de  comptoir.  Ernestine  resolutely 
handed  her  over  to  the  police,  which  proved  to  be  a  very  bad 
move  indeed,  for  no  good  French  substitute  could  be  found 
immediately  and  her  Nebraska  successor  spoke  no  French 
and  twanged  her  English  in  the  good  Omaha  way.  She  gave 
the  Cake  Shop  the  air  of  a  Childs'  Restaurant.  Milly  cabled 
her  ally  in  Paris,  Madame  Catteau,  for  a  new  Queen  of  the 
Counter,  but  she  did  not  arrive  until  their  first  season  was 
drawing  to  a  close. 

There  were  other  difficulties,  new  ones  almost  every  day, 
but  the  two  partners  met  them  all  pluckily,  —  Ernestine 
with  a  determined  look  and  a  heavy  hand ;  Milly,  with  smiles 
and  tactful  suggestions.  Ernestine  admired  the  wonderful 
way  in  which  Milly  managed  "the  French  help,"  talking  to 
them  in  their  own  language,  flattering  them,  finding  com- 
panions and  ways  of  forgetting  their  loneliness.  And  through 
their  troubles  both  were  buoyed  up  by  the  stimulating  sense 
of  success  and  prosperity.  They  were  making  money,  — 
how  much  they  did  not  know  because  the  business  was  com- 
plex and  they  hadn't  time  to  figure  it  all  out,  —  but  a  good 
deal  they  were  sure.  As  the  winter  season  came  to  a  close 
there  was  a  lull  naturally  because  many  of  their  patrons 
left  the  city  for  California  and  the  south.  It  was  a  conven- 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  383 

lent  breathing  time  in  which  they  could  straighten  out  their 
affairs  and  plan  the  future  campaign.  Trade  revived  at  the 
end  of  May  and  held  pretty  well  into  July,  then  dropped  as 
the  country  season  got  into  swing.  Ernestine  was  for  turn- 
ing the  Cake  Shop  into  a  glorified  ice-cream  stand  for  the 
summer,  but  Milly  would  not  hear  of  this  desecration  of  her 
Vision ;  they  were  both  tired  and  had  earned  a  vacation.  So 
while  Ernestine  took  Virginia  to  one  of  the  lake  resorts, 
Milly  rested  in  the  big,  cool,  empty  house  and  played  around 
Chicago  with  her  numerous  friends. 
She  felt  that  she  deserved  a  reward,  and  she  took  it. 


VI 

COMING   DOWN 

THE  Cake  Shop  started  the  autumn  season  rather  dully. 
Some  of  its  e*clat  had  evaporated  by  the  second  year,  and  M. 
Paul  was  decidedly  getting  spoiled  in  the  New  World.  His 
cakes  were  inferior  in  both  quality  and  variety,  and  he 
demanded  a  sixty  per  cent  rise  in  wages,  which  they  felt 
obliged  to  give  him.  Another  girl  had  drifted  away  during 
the  summer,  so  that  one  lone  Parisian  maiden  —  and  the 
homeliest  of  the  trio  —  remained  to  "give  an  air"  to  the 
Cake  Shop,  and  she,  already  corrupted  by  the  free  air  of  the 
west,  gave  it  sullenly  and  with  a  Chicago  heaviness.  The 
shop  itself  was,  of  course,  less  fresh  and  dainty,  having  suffered 
from  ten  months  of  smoke,  although  they  had  spent  a  good 
deal  in  having  it  largely  redecorated.  Just  as  the  cakes 
became  heavier,  tougher,  more  ordinary,  as  the  months 
passed,  so  the  whole  enterprise  suffered  gradually  from  that 
coarsening  and  griming  which  seems  an  inevitable  result  of 
Chicago  use.  Much  of  the  fine  artistic  flavor  of  Milly 's 
conception  had  already  been  lost.  It  was  becoming  com- 
mercialized. Ernestine  did  not  perceive  these  changes,  to 
be  sure,  though  Milly  did  in  her  less  buoyant  moments. 
What  troubled  Ernestine  was  the  fact  that  the  receipts  were 
falling  off,  and  the  accounts  were  hard  to  collect. 

She  suspected  that  Milly  had  lost  something  of  her  enthu- 
siasm for  the  Cake  Shop.  Milly  certainly  devoted  less  ardor 

384 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  385 

to  the  enterprise.  She  continued  to  go  out  a  good  deal, 
more  than  Ernestine  felt  was  good  for  her  health  or  good  for 
the  business,  and  she  often  required  the  use  of  the  house  and 
the  servants  for  elaborate  luncheons  or  dinner-parties.  This 
invariably  put  the  machine  out  of  order,  although  Milly 
always  feed  the  employees  liberally  for  their  extra  service. 
Ernestine  did  not  like  to  complain,  because  it  seemed  selfish 
to  deprive  Milly  of  the  social  relaxation  she  craved.  So  she 
took  her  supper  with  Virgie  in  the  latter's  nursery.  When 
she  did  demur  finally,  Milly,  without  a  word,  transferred  her 
party  to  an  expensive  new  hotel,  which  was  not  good  for 
Milly's  all-too-open  purse. 

Business  picked  up  at  the  holiday  season,  but  fell  off  again 
thereafter.  They  were  not  making  much  money  this  second 
winter,  and  Ernestine  was  becoming  anxious. 

"You're  always  worrying  about  something,"  Milly  said, 
when  Ernestine  pointed  out  this  fact  to  her.  "If  the  Cake 
Shop  fails,  I'll  think  up  something  else  that  will  put  us  right," 
she  added  lightly,  in  the  r61e  of  the  fertile  creator,  and  tripped 
off  to  the  theatre. 

But  that  wasn't  Ernestine's  idea  of  business.  She  got  out 
the  books  and  went  through  them  again. 

The  play  proved  to  be  entertaining,  and  Milly  returned 
home  in  good  spirits.  From  the  hall  she  heard  the  sounds  of 
voices  in  altercation  in  the  rear  room  where  Ernestine  had 
her  desk.  M.  Paul's  excited  accent  could  be  distinguished 
playing  arpeggios  all  over  Ernestine's  grumbling  bass. 
"Oh,  dear!"  thought  Milly,  "Paul's  off  the  hooks  again 
and  I'll  have  to  straighten  him  out."  .... 

"See  here,  my  man  — "  Ernestine  growled,  but  what  she 
2c 


386  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

was  going  to  say  was  cut  off  by  a  flood  of  Gallic  imper- 
tinence. 

"Your  man  !  Ah,  non,  non,  non  !  Indeed  not  the  man  of 
such  a  woman  as  you  !  I  call  you  '  my  voman '  ?  Not  by  —  " 

Here  Milly  intervened  to  prevent  a  more  explicit  illustra- 
tion of  M.  Paul's  contempt  for  Ernestine's  femininity. 

"She  call  me  her  'man' !"  the  pastry-cook  flamed,  point- 
ing disdainfully  at  Ernestine. 

"The  fellow's  been  thieving  from  us  for  months,"  Ernestine 
said  angrily,  and  pointing  to  the  door  she  said,  —  "Get  out ! " 

"Oh,  Ernestine  !"  Milly  protested. 

But  M.  Paul  had  "got  out"  with  a  few  further  remarks 
uncomplimentary  to  American  women,  and  the  damage 
was  done.  Ernestine  could  not  be  made  to  see  that  with  the 
departure  of  the  pastry-cook,  the  last  substantial  prop  to 
Milly's  fairy  structure  was  gone. 

"The  beast  has  been  selling  our  sugar  and  supplies," 
Ernestine  explained. 

"It  makes  no  difference  what  he  has  done!"  Milly  re- 
plied with  justifiable  asperity. 

The  next  morning  she  set  forth  to  track  the  fugitive  pastry- 
cook and  wile  him  back  to  their  service.  She  found  him 
after  a  time  at  one  of  the  new  hotels,  where  he  had  already 
been  engaged  as  pastry-cook.  To  Milly's  plea  that  he  re- 
turn to  his  old  allegiance,  he  orated  dramatically  upon  Er- 
nestine and  la  femme  in  general. 

"You,  Madame  Brag-donne,  are  du  vrai  monde"  he  tes- 
tified tearfully.  "But  that  thing  —  bah!  'Her  man'  — 
canaille  du  peuple,"  —  etc. 

Milly,  touched  by  the  compliment,  tried  to  make  him 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  387 

understand  the  meaning  of  her  partner's  remark.  But  he 
shook  his  head  wrathfully,  and  she  was  forced  to  depart, 
defeated.  It  was  some  consolation  to  reflect  that  this  time 
it  had  been  Ernestine's  fault.  Milly  thought  there  might 
be  something  in  the  Frenchman's  criticism  of  Ernestine. 
Her  good  partner  lacked  tact,  and  she  was  indisputably  "of 
the  people."  Milly  philosophized,  —  "Servants  always  feel 
those  things." 

She  walked  across  the  city  from  the  hotel  hi  a  depressed 
frame  of  mind,  —  not  so  much  crushed  by  approaching  dis- 
aster as  numbed.  She  had  something  of  the  famous  "ar- 
tistic temperament,"  which  is  fervid  and  buoyant  in  creation, 
but  apt  to  lose  interest  and  become  cold  when  the  gauzy 
fabric  of  fancy's  weaving  fails  to  work  out  as  it  should.  She 
passed  the  Cake  Shop,  where  through  the  long  front  windows 
she  could  see  the  girls  idling  over  the  marble  counter,  and 
instead  of  turning  in,  as  she  had  meant  to  do,  she  kept  on 
towards  the  Avenue.  The  place  gave  her  a  chill  these  days. 
All  the  dazzling  gilt  was  dropping  from  the  creature  of  her 
imagination,  and  it  was  becoming  smudged,  like  the  sign, 
by  reality.  Ernestine  had  seriously  suggested  converting 
the  Cake  Shop  into  a  lunch-counter  for  the  employees  of 
the  neighboring  office  buildings !  Milly  saw  a  horrible 
vision  of  coarse  sandwiches,  machine-made  pies,  and  Bis- 
marcks  (a  succulent  western  variety  of  doughnut)  on  the 
marble  tables  instead  of  Paul's  dainty  confections;  coffee 
and  "soft  drinks"  in  place  of  the  rainbow-hued  "sirops." 
Her  soul  shuddered.  No,  they  would  take  down  the  pretty 
sign  and  close  the  doors  of  the  Cake  Shop  before  admitting 
such  desecration  into  the  temple  of  her  dreams.  .  .  . 


388  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

People  seemed  to  be  hurrying  towards  the  Avenue,  their 
heads  tilted  upwards,  and  a  crowd  had  gathered  on  the  steps 
of  the  Art  Institute.  Milly,  whose  mind  fortunately  was 
easily  distracted  from  her  troubles,  joined  the  pushing,  good- 
natured  throng  of  men  and  women,  who  were  staring  open- 
mouthed  into  the  heavens.  It  was  the  opening  day  of 
Chicago's  first  "Air  Meet,"  which  Milly  had  forgotten  in 
the  anxiety  caused  by  M.  Paul.  Far  above  the  smoky 
haze  of  the  city,  in  the  dim,  distant  depths  of  the  blue  sky 
there  was  a  tiny  object  floating,  circling  waywardly,  as  free 
apparently  as  a  lark  in  the  high  heavens,  on  which  the  eyes 
of  the  multitude  were  fastened  in  fascination.  Milly  uttered 
a  little,  unconscious  sigh  of  satisfaction.  Ah,  that  would 
be  to  live,  —  to  soar  above  the  murk  and  the  roar  of  the 
city,  free  as  a  bird  in  the  vast,  wind-swept  spaces  of  the  sky  ! 
It  filled  her,  as  it  did  the  eager  crowd,  with  delight  and  yearn- 
ing aspiration.  She  sighed  again.  .  .  . 

"It's  a  pretty  sight,  isn't  it?"  a  familiar  voice  observed 
close  behind  her.  With  a  start  Milly  turned  and  perceived, 
on  the  step  below,  —  Edgar  Duncan.  His  long  face  had  an 
eager,  wistful  expression,  also,  caused  perhaps  by  the  aerial 
phenomenon  above,  as  much  as  by  the  sight  of  his  lost  love ; 
but  the  expression  took  Milly  back  immediately  to  the 
little  front  room  on  Acacia  Street,  when  Duncan  had  stood 
before  her  to  receive  his  blow. 

"There!"  Duncan  exclaimed  quickly,  before  Milly  could 
collect  an  appropriate  remark.  "He's  coming  down!" 
Speechless  they  both  craned  their  heads  backwards  to  follow 
the  aeroplane.  The  airman,  tired  of  his  lofty  wandering,  or 
having  done  the  day's  stunt  required  of  him,  had  begun  to 


ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE  389 

descend  and  shot  rapidly  towards  the  spectators  out  of  the 
sky.  As  he  came  nearer  the  earth,  he  executed  the  reckless 
corkscrew  manoeuvre :  the  great  winged  machine  seemed 
to  be  rushing,  tumbling  in  a  perpendicular  line  just  above 
the  heads  of  the  gazing  crowd.  There  was  an  agonized  mur- 
mur, a  prolonged,  —  "Ah  !"  It  gave  Milly  delicious  thrills 
up  and  down  her  body.  When  the  airman  took  another 
leap  towards  earth,  her  heart  stopped  beating  altogether. 
With  only  a  few  hundred  feet  between  him  and  the  earth 
the  airman  turned  his  planes  and  began  circling  in  slow 
curves  over  the  adjacent  strip  of  park,  as  if  he  were  judi- 
ciously selecting  the  best  spot  for  alighting. 

"It  doesn't  take  'em  long  to  come  down!"  Duncan  re- 
marked, and  Milly,  with  a  swift  mental  comparison  of  the 
aeroplane  flight  and  her  own  little  fate,  replied,  — 

"It  never  takes  long  to  come  down,  does  it?" 

She  looked  more  closely  now  at  her  former  lover.  Ap- 
parently his  blow  had  not  seriously  damaged  him.  His 
figure  was  fuller  and  his  face  tanned  to  a  healthier  color  than 
she  remembered.  He  seemed  to  be  in  good  spirits,  and  not 
perceptibly  older  than  he  was  ten  years  before.  They  de- 
scended the  steps  with  the  moving  throng  and  strolled  slowly 
up  the  crowded  boulevard,  watching  the  distant  flights  and 
talking. 

Edgar  Duncan,  she  learned,  had  not  spent  the  ten  years 
nursing  a  wounded  heart.  He  had  doubled  the  acreage  of 
his  ranch,  he  told  her,  and  thanks  to  the  fatherly  government 
at  Washington,  which  had  trebled  the  duty  on  foreign  lemons, 
he  was  doing  very  well  indeed.  The  big  yellow  balls  among 
the  glossy  leaves  were  fast  becoming  golden  balls.  He 


390  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

was  now  on  his  way  east  to  see  his  people  and  also  to  look 
after  the  interests  of  a  fruit-growers'  association  in  the  matter 
of  a  railroad  rate  on  lemons.  He  seemed  very  much  alive. 
The  blow  had  probably  done  him  good,  Milly  concluded,  — 
had  waked  him  up. 

There  were  a  few  hours  between  his  trains,  he  explained 
to  Milly,  and  so  he  had  wandered  over  to  the  park  to 
watch  the  aeroplanes,  which  were  the  first  of  the  bird  ma- 
chines he  had  ever  seen.  It  was  almost  time  now  for  him  to 
leave.  But  he  lost  that  Washington  train.  For  he  walked 
home  with  Milly  to  see  her  little  girl,  stayed  to  luncheon, 
and  was  still  at  the  house  telling  Virginia  about  real  oranges 
on  real  orange  trees  when  Ernestine  came  in.  She  was  hot 
and  tired,  evidently  much  disturbed,  and  more  than  usually 
short  with  Milly's  guest.  Duncan  left  soon  afterwards, 
and  then  Milly  asked,  — 

" What's  the  matter,  Ernestine?" 

"I'd  think  you'd  know  !  .  .  .  If  we  can't  get  a  cook,  we 
might  as  well  shut  up  the  shop  to-morrow/"' 

Milly  had  forgotten  all  about  the  loss  of  the  pastry-cook 
and  the  business  in  her  surprise  at  meeting  Edgar  Duncan 
again  and  all  the  memories  he  had  revived. 

"All  right ! "  she  said  promptly.     " Do  it." 

"Give  up  the  business?"  Ernestine  asked  in  amazement. 
She  could  not  believe  Milly  meant  to  take  her  testy  remark 
seriously.  What  had  come  over  Milly  ! 

"We  might  try  it  in  Pasadena,"  Milly  remarked  after  a 
time.  "There  are  a  lot  of  rich  people  out  there." 

This  went  beyond  the  bounds  of  Ernestine's  patience. 

"Pasadena!  .  .  .    Last  time  it  was  Palm  Beach,  and  before 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  391 

that  it  was  Newport.  What's  the  matter  with  staying  right 
here  and  making  good?" 

Milly  did  not  reply.  Ernestine's  pent-up  irritation  over- 
flowed still  more. 

"You  ain't  any  business  woman,  Milly  !" 

"I  never  said  I  was." 

"You  always  want  to  get  in  some  society  work  — 
social  pull !  Rich  folks!"  Ernestine  groaned  with  disgust. 
"That  kind  of  furor  don't  last.  They're  too  flighty  in  their 
notions." 

"Like  me,"  Milly  interposed  bitterly. 

"Well,  it  ain't  business  to  quit." 

"Oh,  business!"  Milly  exclaimed  disgustedly.  She  felt 
like  an  artist  whose  great  work  has  been  scorned  by  the 
philistines. 

"Yes,  business!"  Ernestine  asserted  hotly.  "If  you're 
going  into  business,  you've  got  to  play  the  game  and  play  it 
hard  all  the  time,  too.  Or  you'd  better  marry  and  do  the 
other  thing." 

"Perhaps  I'll  marry,"  Milly  retorted  with  an  enigmatical 
smile. 

Ernestine  stared  at  her  agape.  Was  that  what  was  the 
trouble  with  Milly  ?  She  had  not  meant  to  go  so  far. 


VII 

CAPITULATIONS 

THEY  found  another  pastry-cook,  —  a  French-Canadian 
woman.  But  if  her  ancestors  had  ever  seen  the  Isle  de 
France,  it  must  have  been  centuries  ago,  and  the  family 
had  become  fatally  corrupted  since  by  British  gastronomic 
ideals.  Her  pastry  was  thicker  and  heavier  than  Paul's 
worst,  and  she  had  "no  more  imagination  than  a  cow" 
according  to  Milly.  How  could  one  make  fine  cakes  without 
imagination?  "They  make  better  ones  at  the  Auditorium 
Hotel  even/'  Milly  observed  disgustedly.  The  Cake  Shop 
had  gone  down  another  peg.  Now  it  served  afternoon  tea 
with  English  wafers  instead  of  the  exotic  "sirops"  and 
"liqueurs,"  and  advertised  "Dainty  Luncheons  for  Suburban 
Shoppers."  (That  was  Ernestine's  phrasing.)  Milly  almost 
never  went  near  the  place,  and  acted  as  if  she  wanted  to 
forget  it  altogether. 

In  her  efforts  to  revive  her  partner's  waning  interest 
Ernestine  even  suggested  Milly's  going  again  to  Paris  to 
engage  a  fresh  crew,  but  Milly  only  shrugged  her  shoulders. 
"What's  the  use?  You  know  we  haven't  the  money." 

"Borrow  it !"  Ernestine  said  desperately. 

"When  a  thing  is  dead,  it's  dead,"  Milly  pronounced,  and 
added  oracularly,  "Better  to  let  the  dead  past  bury  its 
dead,"  and  murmured  the  lines  from  a  celebrated  new  play, 
"Smashed  to  hell  is  smashed  to  hell !"  If  she  were  willing 

392 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  393 

to  see  her  creation  die,  Ernestine  ought  to  be.  But  that  was 
not  Ernestine's  nature :  she  was  not  artistic  nor  tempera- 
mental, as  Milly  often  proved  to  her.  In  her  dumb,  heavy 
fashion  she  still  tried  to  prop  up  the  ill-fated  Cake  Shop  and 
make  it  pay  expenses  at  least,  in  one  way  or  another. 

The  time  came,  as  it  must  come,  when  even  this  was  more 
than  Ernestine  could  compass.  She  had  tried  every  device 
she  could  think  of,  but,  as  she  reflected  sadly,  she  had  not 
been  brought  up  to  the  "food  business."  It  was  a  peculiar 
business,  like  all  businesses,  especially  the  delicatessen  end, 
and  needed  an  expert  to  diagnose  its  cure.  So  the  doors 
were  closed,  and  a  "  To  Rent "  sign  plastered  on  the  front  panes. 
Ernestine  acknowledged  defeat. 

Milly  was  outwardly  unmoved.  She  had  divined  the 
outcome  so  much  sooner  than  her  partner  that  she  had  already 
passed  through  the  agonies  of  failure  and  come  to  that  other 
side  where  one  looks  about  for  the  next  engagement  with 
life.  Possibly  she  had  already  in  view  what  this  was  to  be. 
She  assented  indifferently  to  Ernestine's  proposal  that  they 
should  meet  Mr.  Kemp  and  the  agent  at  the  Shop  and 
decide  what  was  to  be  done  about  the  lease,  which  had  more 
than  a  year  to  run. 

"They'll  be  there  shortly  after  noon,"  Ernestine  reminded 
Milly,  as  the  latter  was  about  to  leave  the  house  that  day. 

"All  right,"  she  said  evasively.  "I'll  try  to  be  there,  but 
it  won't  make  any  difference  if  I'm  not  —  you  know  about 
everything." 

She  was  not  there.  Ernestine  knew  well  enough  that 
Milly  would  not  come  to  the  funeral  of  their  enterprise  at 
the  Cake  Shop,  and  though  she  felt  hurt  she  said  nothing  to 


394  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

the  men  and  went  through  with  the  last  formalities  in  the 
dusty,  dismantled  temple  of  cakes.  At  the  end  the  banker 
asked  Ernestine  kindly  what  she  meant  to  do.  He  knew 
that  the  Laundryman's  capital  had  gone  —  all  her  savings  — 
and  that  "the  firm"  was  in  debt  to  his  bank  for  a  loan  of 
several  hundred  dollars,  which  he  expected  to  pay  himself 
and  also  to  take  care  of  the  lease.  *  - 

"I  don't  know  yet,"  Ernestine  replied.  "I'll  find  some 
place.  .  .  .  And  it  won't  be  in  any  fancy  kind  of  business 
like  this,  you  can  bet,"  and  she  cast  a  malevolent  glance 
over  the  tarnished  glories  of  the  Cake  Shop.  "I  got  my  ex- 
perience and  I  paid  for  it  —  with  every  cent  I  had  in  the 
world.  I  ain't  goin'  to  buy  any  more  of  that !" 

The  banker  laughed  sympathetically. 

"What's  Mrs.  Bragdon  going  to  do?"  he  inquired. 

"I  don't  know  —  she  hasn't  told  me  yet." 

Her  answer  was  evasive  because  Ernestine  suspected  very 
well  what  Milly  was  likely  to  do.  .  .  .  She  turned  the  key  in 
the  lock,  handed  it  over  to  the  agent,  and  with  a  curt  nod  to 
the  two  men  strode  away  from  the  Cake  Shop  for  the  last 
time.  (That  evening  the  banker,  reporting  the  occurrence  to 
his  wife,  said,  —  "I  feel  sorry  for  that  woman  !  She's  lost 
every  cent  she  had  —  our  Milly  has  milked  her  clean." 
"Walter,  how  can  you  say  that  ?  "  his  wife  replied  indignantly. 
"It  wasn't  Milly's  fault  if  the  business  failed,  anymore  than 
hers."  "Well,  I'd  like  to  bet  it's  a  good  big  part  the  fault  of 
our  pretty  friend."  "Miss  Geyer  ought  not  to  have  gone 
into  something  she  knew  nothing  about."  "Milly  bewitched 
her,  I  expect.  The  best  thing  she  can  do  is  to  shake  her  and 
go  back  to  the  laundry  business.") 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  395 

It  was  not  Ernestine,  however,  who  was  to  "  shake  "  Milly. 
That  lady  herself  was  busily  evading  their  partnership,  as 
Ernestine  suspected.  While  the  short  obsequies  were  being 
transacted  at  the  Cake  Shop,  Milly  was  lunching  in  the  one 
good  new  hotel  Chicago  boasts  with  Edgar  Duncan,  who  had 
returned  from  Washington  sooner  than  expected  and  had 
asked  Milly  by  telegraph  to  lunch  with  him.  Seated  in  the 
spacious,  cool  room  overlooking  the  Boulevard  and  the  Lake,  at 
a  little  table  cosily  placed  beside  the  open  window,  Milly  might 
easily  have  looked  through  the  fragrant  plants  in  the  flower- 
box  and  descried  Ernestine  doggedly  tramping  homeward 
from  her  final  task  at  the  Cake  Shop.  Milly  preferred  to 
study  the  menu  through  her  little  gold  lorgnette,  and  when 
that  important  matter  had  been  settled  to  her  satisfaction, 
she  sat  back  contentedly  and  smiled  upon  the  man  opposite 
her,  who,  after  a  successful  hearing  before  the  Commerce 
Commission,  had  more  than  ever  the  alert  air  of  a  man  who 
knows  his  own  business.  Outside  in  the  summer  sunlight, 
above  the  blue  water  of  the  Lake  and  over  the  dingy 
sward  of  the  Park,  the  airmen  were  manoeuvring  their 
winged  ships,  casting  great  shadows  as  they  dipped  and 
soared  above  the  admiring  throngs. 

"See,"  Milly  pointed  excitedly  through  the  open  window. 
"He's  going  up  now  !"  And  she  twisted  her  neck  to  get  the 
last  glimpse  of  the  mounting  machine. 

"Yes,"  Duncan  remarked  indifferently,  "they're  doing  a 
lot  of  stunts."  But  he  hadn't  come  back  from  Washington 
by  the  first  train  that  left  after  the  hearing  to  talk  aeroplanes. 
And  Milly  let  him  do  the  talking,  as  she  always  had,  listening 
with  a  childlike  interest  to  what  he  had  to  say. 


396  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

By  this  time  the  reader  must  know  Milly  well  enough  to 
be  able  to  divine  for  himself  what  was  passing  in  her  mind 
as  she  daintily  excavated  the  lobster  shell  on  her  plate  and 
listened  to  the  plea  of  her  rejected  lover.  Probably  this  was 
no  more  able  to  stir  her  pulses  to  a  mad  rhythm  to-day  than 
it  had  been  ten  years  before.  Edgar  Duncan  was  somewhat 
nearer  being  her  Ideal,  —  not  much.  But  Milly  was  ten  years 
older  and  "had  had  her  throbs,"  as  she  once  expressed  it. 
She  knew  their  meaning  now,  their  relative  value,  and  she 
knew  other  values. 

The  value  of  a  home  and  a  stable  position  among  her 
fellows,  for  instance,  no  matter  how  small,  and  so  she  listens 
demurely  while  the  man  talks  hungrily  of  the  Joy  of  Home 
and  the  Beauty  of  Woman  in  the  Home,  "  where  they  be- 
long, not  in  business."  (How  Ernestine  would  give  it  to  him 
for  that,  and  Hazel,  too,  Milly  thought !) 

"You  are  such  a  woman,  Milly  !"  he  exclaims.  —  "Just  a 
woman !"  and  in  his  voice  the  expression  has  a  tender,  rev- 
erential sound  that  falls  pleasantly  on  Milly's  ears.  But 
she  says  nothing :  she  does  not  mean  to  be  "soft"  this  time. 
Yet  in  reply  to  another  compliment,  she  admits,  smiling 
delphically,  —  "Yes,  I  am  a  woman  !" 

The  man  takes  up  another  verse  of  his  song,  for  he  has 
planned  this  attack  carefully  while  the  swift  wheels  were 
turning  off  the  miles  between  Washington  and  Chicago. 

"You  want  your  little  girl  to  have  a  home,  too,  don't 
you  ?  A  real  home,  your  home,  where  she  can  get  the  right 
sort  of  start  in  life  ?" 

"Yes,"  Milly  assents  quickly.  "The  proper  kind  of  home 
means  so  much  more  to  a  girl  than  to  a  boy.  If  I  myself 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  397 

had  had — "  But  she  stops  before  this  baseness  to  poor  old 
Horatio.  "I  want  Virgie's  life  to  be  different  from  mine  — 
so  utterly  different !" 

A  wave  of  self-pity  for  her  loneliness  after  all  her  struggle 
sweeps  over  her  and  casts  a  cloud  on  her  face. 

"You  can't  be  a  business  woman  and  make  that  kind  of 
home  for  your  daughter,"  Duncan  persists,  pushing  for- 
ward his  point. 

Milly  shakes  her  head. 

"I'm  afraid  a  woman  can't !"  she  sighs. 

(She  doesn't  feel  it  necessary  to  tell  him  that  for  almost 
one  hour  by  the  clock  she  has  not  been  a  "business  woman, " 
even  in  the  legal  sense  of  the  term.) 

"Oh,"  she  murmurs,  as  if  convinced  by  his  logic,  "I'm 
good  for  nothing  —  I  can't  even  be  a  good  mother  !" 

"You  are  good  for  everything  —  for  me  !" 

But  Milly  is  not  ready  yet.  In  this  sort  of  transaction 
she  has  grown  to  be  a  more  expert  trader  than  she  was  once. 

"It  must  be  the  right  man,"  she  observes  impersonally. 

And  the  Ranchman  takes  another  start.  He  paints  glow- 
ingly the  freedom  and  the  beauty  of  that  outdoors  life  on 
the  Pacific  Coast,  —  the  fragrant  lemon  orchard  with  its 
golden  harvest  of  yellow  balls,  the  velvety  heavens  spangled 
with  stars  each  night,  the  blooming  roses,  etc.,  etc.  But  he 
cannot  keep  long  off  the  personal  note. 

"I've  sat  there  nights  on  my  veranda,  and  thought  and 
thought  of  you,  Milly,  until  it  seemed  as  though  you  were 
really  there  by  my  side  and  I  could  almost  touch  you." 

"Really !"  Milly  is  becoming  moved  in  spite  of  herself. 
Somehow  Duncan's  words  have  a  genuine  ring  to  them.  "I 


398  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

believe,"  she  muses,  "that  you  are  the  sort  of  man  who  could 
care  always  for  a  woman." 

"I  always  have  cared  for  one  woman  !" 

"You  are  good,  Edgar." 

"I  don't  know  about  that.  Good  hasn't  much  to  do  be- 
tween men  and  women  when  they  love.  .  .  .  It's  always 
love  that  counts,  isn't  it?" 

(Milly  is  not  as  sure  of  that  doctrine  as  she  was  once,  but 
she  is  content  that  the  man  should  feel  that  way.  She  does 
not  argue  the  point.) 

"Can't  you  sit  there  with  me,  Milly,  and  watch  the 
stars  for  the  rest  of  our  lives  ?  " 

Milly  evades.  She  must  have  the  terms  set  forth  more 
explicitly. 

"It  wouldn't  be  right  to  keep  Virgie  out  there  away  from 
people  all  the  time,  would  it?" 

He  sees  the  point  and  yields. 

"We'll  come  here  every  year  for  the  fall  and  see  your 
friends." 

"That  would  be  nice,"  she  accepts  graciously.  But 
Chicago  doesn't  appeal  to  Milly  as  strongly  as  it  had  on  her 
first  return  to  its  breezy,  hearty  life. 

"I  should  like  to  have  Virgie  study  music,"  she  suggests, 
"and  travel  —  have  advantages." 

"Of  course!"  he  assents  eagerly,  and  bids  again,  more 
daringly,  —  "We'll  take  her  to  Europe." 

"That  would  be  pleasant." 

"In  a  year  or  two,"  he  explains,  "the  ranch  will  almost 
run  itself  and  be  making  big  money  —  with  the  right  rate  on 
lemons  and  the  tariff  as  it  is.  Then  we  can  do  almost  any- 
thing we  please  —  live  any  place  you  like." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  399 

A  pause  here.  So  far  it  is  wholly  satisfactory,  Milly  is 
thinking,  and  she  wonders  what  more  she  wants.  Then,  — 

"Milly?" 

She  looks  at  him  with  kind  eyes. 

"You  won't  make  me  wait  — much  longer?" 

Milly  slowly  shakes  her  head,  acceptingly. 

"God,  how  I  have  longed  for  you !" 

"Silly  man!" 

But  she  is  pleased.     She  is  thinking,  — 

"I'm  doing  it  for  Virginia.  It's  her  only  chance  —  I 
must  do  it." 

Which  was  not  altogether  a  falsehood,  and  she  repeats 
this  self-defence  to  herself  again  when  later  on  Duncan  kisses 
her  for  the  first  time,  —  "It's  for  her  sake  —  I  would  do 
anything  for  her."  And  with  a  sigh  of  unconquerable  sen- 
timentalism  she  seals  her  bargain  on  the  man's  lips.  She  has 
found  a  new  sentimental  faith,  —  a  mother's  sacrifice  for  her 
child.  .  .  .  But  she  is  really  very  glad,  and  quite  tender 
with  him. 

In  this  mood  she  bade  her  lover  good-by  at  the  door  and 
went  back  into  the  house  to  meet  her  partner.  Ernestine, 
who  was  not  too  obtuse  to  recognize  what  had  happened 
without  the  -need  of  many  words,  listened  to  Milly 's  an- 
nouncement dumbly.  At  the  end  she  put  her  hand  on  Milly's 
shoulder  and  looked  steadily  at  her  for  several  moments.  She 
was  well  enough  aware  how  false  Milly  had  been  to  her,  how 
careless  of  her  stupid  heart,  how  she  had  betrayed  her  in  the 
final  hour  of  their  tribulations.  Nevertheless,  she  said  quite 
honestly,  —  "I'm  so  glad,  dearie,  for  you  !"  and  kissed  her. 


VIII 

THE    SUNSHINE   SPECIAL 

A  FEW  weeks  later  a  little  party  gathered  in  the  murky 
railroad  station  from  which  the  California  trains  depart 
from  Chicago.  As  they  approached  the  waiting  train,  which 
bore  on  its  observation  platform  the  brass  sign,  "  Sunshine 
Special,"  the  negro  porters  showed  their  gleaming  teeth  and  the 
conductor  muttered  with  an  appropriate  smile,  —  "  Another 
of  them  bridal  parties  !"  At  the  head  of  the  little  procession 
the  Ranchman  walked,  conversing  with  Walter  .Kemp. 
Duncan  had  an  air  of  apparent  detachment,  but  one  eye 
usually  rested  on  Milly,  who  was  walking  with  her  father  and 
was  followed  by  a  laughing  group.  Eleanor  Kemp  was  not 
among  them.  Somehow  since  the  last  evolution  of  Milly's 
affairs  there  had  been  a  coolness  between  these  two  old 
friends,  and  Mrs.  Kemp  had  not  taken  the  trouble  to  leave 
her  summer  home  "  to  see  Milly  off  "  again.  She  had  sent  her 
instead  a  very  pretty  dressing-case  with  real  gold-stoppered 
bottles,  which  the  new  husband  now  handed  over  to  the 
porter. 

Milly's  arm  was  caressingly  placed  on  her  father's. 
Horatio  was  older,  more  wizened,  than  when  we  first  met  him, 
but  he  was  genial  and  happy,  with  a  boyish  light  in  his  eyes. 

"You'll  be  sure  to  come,  papa!"  Milly  said,  squeezing 
his  arm. 

"I  won't  miss  it  this  time,  daughter,"  Horatio  replied 

400 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  401 

slyly,  —  "my  long-delayed  trip  to  California."  He  chuckled 
reminiscently. 

"You  must  bring  Josephine  with  you,  of  course/'  Milly 
added  hastily. 

Mrs.  Horatio,  still  stern  behind  her  spectacles,  even  in  the 
midst  of  a  merry  bridal  party,  relented  sufficiently  to  say,  — 

"I  ain't  much  on  travelling  about  in  cars  myself." 

Milly,  with  the  amiability  of  one  who  has  at  last  "made 
good, "  remarked  patronizingly,  — 

"You'll  get  used  to  the  cars  in  three  days,  my  dear." 

Horatio  meanwhile  was  playing  with  little  Virginia, 
teasing  her  about  her  "new  Papa."  The  little  girl  smiled 
rather  dubiously.  She  had  the  animal-like  loyalty  of  child- 
hood, and  glanced  suspiciously  at  the  "New  Papa."  How- 
ever, she  had  already  learned  from  the  constant  mutations 
of  her  brief  life  to  accept  the  New  and  the  Unexpected  with- 
out complaint.  At  last  perceiving  Ernestine,  who  was 
hurrying  breathlessly  down  the  long  platform  in  search  of 
the  party,  a  huge  bunch  of  long-stemmed  roses  hugged  close 
in  her  arms,  Virginia  ran  to  meet  her  old  friend  and  clung 
tight  to  the  Laundryman. 

"Take  'em  !"  Ernestine  said,  breathing  hard  and  thrusting 
the  prickly  flowers  into  Milly's  arms.  "My!  I  thought 
I'd  miss  the  train." 

"Oh,  Ernestine!  why  did  you  do  that,  dear?"  Milly 
exclaimed  in  a  pleased  voice. 

"It's  the  last  of  the  Cake  Shop  !"  Ernestine  replied  with  a 
grim  smile.  And  the  roses  were  almost  literally  the  sole 
remains  of  that  defunct  enterprise,  having  taken  the  last  of 
Ernestine's  dollars. 

2D 


402  ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE 

"They're  perfectly  gorgeous  —  it  was  lovely  of  you  to 
think  of  bringing  them  for  me.  I'll  cut  the  stems  and  put 
them  in  water  and  they  will  keep  all  the  way  to  the  Coast  — 
and  remind  me  of  you,"  Milly  said,  who  had  formed  the  habit 
of  receiving  floral  offerings. 

She  handed  the  awkward  bunch  over  to  "  Husband,"  who 
hastened  dutifully  to  place  them  in  their  compartment. 

"He's  on  his  job,"  Ernestine  grinned.  The  banker 
laughed. 

"That's  what  we  men  are  made  for,  isn't  it,  Milly?" 

"Of  course!" 

She  was  in  her  right  element  once  more,  the  centre  of  the 
picture,  —  becomingly  dressed  in  a  gray  travelling  suit, 
"younger  than  ever,"  about  to  start  on  a  wonderful  three 
days'  journey  to  a  strange  new  land,  with  her  faithful  and 
adoring  knight.  What  more  was  there  in  life  ? 

"All  aboard  !"  the  conductor  droned. 

Exclamations  and  final  embraces.  Milly  came  to  Ernes- 
tine Geyer  last. 

"  Good-by,  dear  !  You've  been  awfully  good  to  me  —  I 
can  never  forget  it !" 

"Yes,  you  will  —  that's  all  right,"  Ernestine  replied 
gruffly,  not  knowing  exactly  what  she  was  saying. 

"I  hope  you'll  make  a  fortune  in  your  new  business  — " 

"Him  and  me,"  Ernestine  interrupted,  nodding  jocularly 
towards  the  banker,  "are  going  into  the  laundry  business 
together." 

"You  must  write  me  all  about  it !  " 

"I  will." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  403 

In  a  last  confidential  whisper  Milly  said,  —  "And  some 
day  marry  a  good  man,  dear  !" 

" Marry! !"  Ernestine  hooted,  so  that  all  could  hear.  "Me, 
marry  !  Not  much  —  I'll  leave  the  matrimony  business  to 
you." 

Then  they  kissed. 

There  were  tears  in  Ernestine's  eyes  as  she  stood  waving  a 
pocket-handkerchief  after  the  receding  train.  Milly  was  at 
the  rail  of  the  observation  platform,  leaning  on  the  brass 
sign  and  waving  both  hands  to  her  old  friends,  Chicago, 
her  past.  Little  Virginia  at  her  side  waved  an  inch  or  two  of 
white  also,  while  the  smiling  ranchman  stood  over  them 
benignantly,  protectingly,  one  hand  on  his  wife's  shoulder  to 
keep  her  from  falling  over  the  rail. 

When  the  train  had  swept  out  into  the  yards,  the  little 
party  broke  up.  Horatio,  who  was  choky,  turned  to  his 
wife.  Mrs.  Horatio  was  already  studying  through  her 
spectacles  a  suburban  time-card  to  ascertain  the  next 
"local "for  Elm  Park.  Ernestine  and  Walter  Kemp  slowly 
strolled  up  the  train-shed  together.  The  banker  was  the 
first  to  break  the  silence :  — 

"Guess  they'll  have  a  comfortable  journey,  not  too  dusty. 
.  .  %  He  seems  to  be  a  good  fellow,  and  he  must  have  a  fine 
place  out  there." 

Ernestine  said  nothing. 

"Well,"  the  banker  remarked,  "Milly  is  settled  now  any- 
way —  hope  she'll  be  happy  !  She  wasn't  much  of  a  busi- 
ness woman,  eh?"  He  looked  at  Ernestine,  who  smiled 
grimly,  but  made  no  reply.  "She's  better  off  married,  I 


404  ONE  WOMAN'S   LIFE 

expect  —  most  women  are,"  he  philosophized,  "whether 
they  like  it  or  not.  .  .  .  That's  what  a  woman  like  Milly  is 
meant  for.  .  .  .  She's  the  kind  that  men  have  run  after  from 
the  beginning  of  the  world,  I  guess  —  the  woman  with  beauty 
and  charm,  you  know." 

Ernestine  nodded.     She  knew  better  than  the  banker. 

"She'll  never  do  much  anywhere,  but  she'll  always  find 
some  man  crazy  to  do  for  her,"  and  he  added  something  in 
German  about  the  eternal  feminine,  which  Ernestine  failed 
to  get. 

There  was  a  steady  drizzle  from  a  lowering,  greasy  sky 
outside  of  the  train-shed,  and  the  two  paused  at  the  door. 
With  a  long  sigh  Ernestine  emitted,  — 

"I  only  hope  she'll  be  happy  now  !" 

As  if  he  had  not  heard  this  heartfelt  prayer,  the  banker 
mused  aloud,  — 

"  She's  Woman,  —  the  old-fashioned  kjnd,  —  just  Woman  ! " 

Ernestine  looked  steadily  into  the  drizzle.  Neither  com- 
mented on  what  both  understood  to  be  the  banker's  meaning, 

—  that  Milly  was  the  type  of  what  men  through  the  ages,  in 
their  paramount  desire  for  exclusive  sex  possession,  had  made 
of  women,  what  civilization  had  made  of  her,  and  society  still 
encouraged  her  to  become  when  she  could,  —  an  adventuress, 

—  in  the  banker's  more  sophisticated  phrase,  —  a  fortuitous, 
somewhat  parasitic  creature.     In  Ernestine's  more  vulgar 
idiom,  if  she  had  permitted  herself  to  express  her  conviction, 
"Milly  was  a  little  grafter."     But  Ernestine  would  not  have 
let  hot  iron  force  the  words  through  her  lips.  .  .  . 

"And  I  suppose,"  the  banker  concluded,  "that's  the  kind 
of  women  men  will  always  desire  and  want  to  work  for." 


ONE  WOMAN'S  LIFE  405 

"I  guess  so/'  Ernestine  mumbled. 

Had  she  not  worked  for  Milly?  She  would  have  slaved 
for  her  cheerfully  all  her  life  and  felt  it  a  privilege.  Milly  had 
stripped  her  to  the  bone,  and  wounded  her  heart  in  addition, 
—  but  Ernestine  loved  her  still. 

"Can  I  put  you  down  anywhere  ?"  Kemp  asked,  as  his  car 
came  up  to  the  curb. 

"No,  thanks  — I'll  walk." 

"Remember  when  you  want  some  money  for  your  new 
business  to  come  and  see  me  !" 

"I  owe  you  too  much  now." 

"Oh,"  he  said  good-naturedly,  "that  account  is  wiped  off. 
The  partnership's  been  dissolved." 

"That  ain't  the  way  I  do  business." 

"I  wish  more  of  my  men  customers  felt  like  yo u"  the 
banker  laughed  as  the  car  drove  away. 

Ernestine  plunged  into  the  drizzle,  and  while  the  Sunshine 
Special  was  hurrying  the  old-fashioned  woman  westward  to 
the  golden  slopes  of  California,  with  her  pretty 

"face  that  burned  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium," 

the  new  woman  plodded  sturdily  through  the  mucky  Chicago 
streets  on  her  way  to  the  eternal  Job. 

Milly  was  settled  at  last,  and,  let  us  assume,  "lived  happily 
ever  after." 


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NEW   MACMILLAN   FICTION  — Continued 

THE  IMPEACHMENT    OF 
PRESIDENT  ISRAELS 

By  FRANK  B.  COPLEY 

Illustrated,  Cloth,  12mo,  $1.00  net 

This  is  the  story  of  the  impeachment  of  David  Israels,  President  of  the 
United  States,  as  told  by  his  private  secretary.  Instead  of  preparing  for  war 
to  avenge  the  killing  of  four  American  sailors,  President  Israels  persisted  in 
proposals  for  peace,  finally  sending  a  fleet  to  Constantinople  to  celebrate  some 
Turkish  anniversary,  which  act  brought  upon  him  the  terrible  stigma.  All 
this,  it  might  be  explained,  has  yet  to  take  place,  for  Israels  is  a  future 
president.  The  effect  of  reality  is  well  kept  up  by  Mr.  Copley,  who  inciden- 
tally introduces  some  very  wholesome  truths,  notably  that  the  way  to  realize 
universal  peace  is  to  refuse  even  to  consider  the  possibility  of  war,  that  moral 
suasion  is  more  forceful  than  physical  threats,  and  that  a  war  resulting  from 
mob  panic  and  hate  is  only  folly  and  wickedness. 


VANISHING  POINTS 

By  ALICE  BROWN 

Author  of  "  The  Secret  of  the  Clan  " 

Decorated  Cloth,  12mo,  $1.30  net 

As  a  writer  of  delicately  turned  short  stories,  fine  in  their  execution,  Alice 
Brown  has  few  equals.  She  is  best  known,  perhaps,  for  her  New  England 
tales,  and  there  are  a  number  in  the  present  collection  which  present  the  true 
and  ever  pleasing  atmosphere  of  that  part  of  this  country.  The  book  is  not, 
however,  composed  solely  of  this  kind  of  fiction.  Not  a  few  of  the  most  inter- 
esting of  the  stories  make  their  appeal  because  they  rest  on  feelings,  beliefs, 
and  characteristics  that  are  universal  in  human  nature.  One  feels,  as  one 
reads  of  the  man  who  thought  that  as  so  many  people  in  this  broad  land  must 
suffer  from  poverty  and  cold  and  hunger,  he,  too,  should  share  their  lot,  or  of 
the  writer  who,  though  his  success  did  not  appear  to  be  great,  was,  neverthe- 
less, influencing  the  work  of  others,  or  of  the  editor  who  took  a  stand  against 
the  unfair  policy  of  his  magazine,  or  of  the  mother  who  saved  her  son  from 
the  wiles  of  an  adventuress,  or  of  any,  in  fact,  of  Miss  Brown's  delightful 
characters,  that  the  art  of  short  fiction  is  at  last  coming  into  its  own. 


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NEW    MACMILLAN    FICTION  — Continued 

POOR,  DEAR  MARGARET  KIRBY 

By  KATHLEEN  NORRIS 

Author  of  "  Mother,"  "  The  Rich  Mrs.  Burgoyne  " 

FRONTISPIECE  IN  COLOR 

Decorated  Cloth,  12mo,  $1.30  net 

Though  Kathleen  Norris  has  become  most  widely  known  through  her  two 
novels,  it  was,  as  is  frequently  the  case,  through  the  short  story  field  that  she 
entered  the  ranks  of  fictionists.  Her  success  in  demonstrating  that  the  crea- 
tion of  the  short  story  is  an  art  of  itself  makes  the  publication  of  this  collection 
of  tales  from  her  pen  most  interesting.  There  are  probably  many  people  in 
this  country  who,  if  asked  to  name  their  favorite  magazine  writer,  would  name 
Mrs.  Norris.  Here  is  gathered  together  the  best  of  the  work  upon  which  this 
reputation  rests.  Stories  of  sentiment,  of  purpose,  humorous  stories,  stories 
reflecting  the  more  serious  phases  of  life,  and  stories  which  were  evidently 
written  just  because  they  afforded  their  author  pleasure,  all  find  a  place  in  this 
versatile  volume. 


COMRADE  YETTA 

By  ALBERT  EDWARDS 

Author  of  "  A  Man's  World,"  etc. 

Cloth,  12mo,  $1.30  net 

In  Yetta  and  the  story  of  her  evolution  from  a  worker  in  a  sweatshop  to  a 
leader  in  the  unions  and  later  a  writer  on  industrial  and  political  topics,  Mr. 
Edwards  has  as  interesting  material  as  that  which  carried  his  "A  Man's  World  " 
to  tremendous  success.  All  those  who  enjoyed  that  earlier  novel,  and  there 
were  many  who  voted  it  the  best  book  in  a  year  of  notable  ones,  will  be  moved 
by  this  work  to  even  greater  admiration  for  Mr.  Edwards's  skill.  It  is  of  love 
and  devotion,  of  social  agitators,  disciples  of  socialism,  and  of  industrial  de- 
mocracy, that  Mr.  Edwards  writes,  and  writes  with  distinction,  presenting  the 
drama  of  a  big  city  underworld  with  unerring  comprehension  and  sympathy. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ 


This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


AUG  1  0  1979  REC'D 

OCT1V83      M 


OCT  2  6  1983  REC'D 


J>pm-12,'70(Pl251s8)2373--3A,l 


PS1 922.05 


3  2106  00207   1451 


